The Greatest Of These...

June 24, 1996

In the 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians, Paul wrote, “So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” This has been quoted millions of times in the ensuing nearly two-thousand years, but I have been asking myself in recent years if the most dominating of religious emotions is HATE.

This musing was sparked yesterday when our minister, Richard Benner, read a letter from a religious fundamentalist which excoriated Richard and predicted that he would burn forever in a “Lake of Fire.” (Revelation). Why was so much religious hatred heaped on Richard? Richard Benner had taken a public stand to defend the rights of gay and lesbian individuals and couples. Dick, like so many of us Unitarian Universalists, thoroughly believes and preaches “the inherent worth and dignity of every person,” and “justice, equity and compassion in human relations.” These sentences are the first two of the Statement of Principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association.

The writer of this vituperative letter demonstrated his invincible ignorance. He was obviously untouched by 150 years of learned scholarship about Bible literature and origins. The matter may be too serious to joke about, but I could not help recalling the story of another fundamentalist who was greatly angered when later translations of the Bible differed from the King James version of 1611. The angry fundamentalist asserted, “If the English of the King James Bible was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for me.”

Such ignorance would be either funny or pathetic if it were not so dangerous. Historian Barbara Tuchman described the sack of Antwerp in 1576 by the troops of Roman Catholic King Philip II of Spain. The troops killed everyone in their path, indiscriminately, and setting the city ablaze, not forgetting however “to fall on their knees in a prayer to the Virgin to bless their enterprise.” Tuchman then cogently observed, “It is a peculiar habit of Christianity to conceive the most compassionate and forgiving divinities and use them to sponsor atrocities.” (THE FIRST SALUTE, P.31)

The same historian writes of Peter Bayle, a rationalist forced to leave France and find shelter in Holland because of his belief that “popular religious beliefs were based on human credulity rather than on reason and reality.” One hundred years before our Bill of Rights – freedom of speech, freedom of religion and separation of church and state – Bayle wrote, “an ideal society would extend its protection to all religions, and that since most theological problems are incapable of proof, man should pray for those he cannot convince rather than oppress them.” (op. cit. p. 41)

It might be just a matter of historical sorrow if such atrocities were all in the past, but one would be naive not to recognize that there is present danger.

James A Haught, who in his earlier book, HOLY HORRORS, chronicled many of the religious atrocities of the past, in the “Washington Spectator” of about a year ago, details present dangers.

We know that “pro-life” fundamentalists murdered workers in abortion clinics in Florida and Massachusetts.

There are hate groups vaguely or specifically identified with the Christian Right and are armed. Currently there are church burnings and the continuing hate-mongering of the Ku Klux Klan. There was violence in West Virginia in the 1970s when fundamentalists turned violent in the “textbook war.” These rioters proclaimed textbooks, “godless.”

In other parts of the world, there are killings, lootings, tortures in the name of religion: Northern Ireland, India, Pakistan, Bosnia/Serbia. The “Supreme Truth” cult in Japan lethally gassed hundreds of persons in the Tokyo subway system.

These instances are current history, not the past. I fear for a world where fanaticism rules. Your truth and my truth need not agree for us to live in peace. I could write on, but let me conclude with a paraphrase of the English historian/sociologist, L. T. Hobhouse:

Essentially (religious) freedom does not consist in like-mindedness, but in the toleration of differences; or, positively, in the acceptance of differences as contributing to richer life than conformity.

“The claim of the free individual, not the impossible one that the common decision should coincide with his/her own, but that his/her decision should be heard and taken into account. He/she claims a part in the councils; he/she takes his share of responsibility.”