SoF has on offer a revolutionary and deeply practical religious insight. We aver, not merely academically, but passionately, with love and anger, that religion is a human construct. We do not say ‘merely’ human, as if apologising for the genius of humanity. Nor do we suggest that the great religious myths are anything other than the most important creations of the very best that our minds and hearts can make. We do, however, declare that these myths are ours, not dropped, unchangeable by us, from somewhere outside.
Even then, we give due value to the sense of ‘other’ with which we ourselves invest our myths; the sense of ‘other’ is a part of our own mythcreation. Is this insight just a last gasp of the religious dodo as we enter the brave new world of secular humanism (so busy creating its own oftunexamined myths)? I would say, ‘No! This is humanity’s bright hope!’ If we look at our world today, where are we hurting most? Wars and rumours of wars must immediately spring to mind. So does the scandal of global poverty, unfair trade, unpayable debt and wickedly unfair distribution of wealth. So also do our concerns for a planet being consumed and changed, perhaps irrevocably, because of human inability to transcend our many self-identities.
In each one of these cases, at the heart of the problems are human myths, always religious in character, and more often that not, overtly religious as well. These myths clash, and people feel helpless to change them. They seem to have come from outside. Our liberating insight is that the myths don’t own us; we own them. They are ours and we can manage them. I am going to take the most obvious case; that of war, but this insight can be applied equally to the others.
Perhaps the most dangerous war in the world today is the war going on in the Holy Land (I use the term deliberately, as you will see). Indeed, other conflicts (Iraq, Afghanistan and the ‘global war on terror’) are closely related to this firstmentioned war. The war has religious myth at its roots, whatever the politicians say. I am now going to summarise these myths, with apologies for the caricature nature of this exercise; in reality myths are too big to do this to!
For many Jews, and more particularly for Israeli Jews, the defining myth is of a God who chose a people and made them certain promises (Genesis 12:1-3), including the promise of land. God rescued them from slavery in Egypt and led them into this Promised Land, and there made a covenant with them. The covenant was (and is) a bargain with two sides – in order for God’s promise to continue to hold, his Law must be kept. This Law includes many high moral precepts that still are the greatest that humanity desires to aspire to. It also includes rules and sanctions that come from a warlike and beleaguered stage in the history of Israel that can now seem immoral or simply irrelevant. At the heart of this story of covenant and promise stands the ‘Holy Land’. Possession of it is not merely the owning of a home-land; it is the visible and concrete sign that the Covenant still holds, and God has not rejected his people.
In fairness it must be added that for many Jews, their story also tells of duty to welcome others into their land and to treat them as equals as the Law demands and their deep desire is for a settled peace where all can dwell together in harmony.
For many Muslims, Palestinians and those beyond, the defining myth is of a full and final revelation from God transmitted through the Prophet, who was aware of God’s revelations to Jews and to Christians, and took them into account as he shared this final revelation with all who would submit to it. Those who do submit are those through whom God works his will for the world.
Our liberating insight is that the myths don't own us; we own them.
This will is that the whole world should enjoy his peace in the light of his revelation. Where a land has been Holy, but is now in the zone of war, it seems that God’s will has been thwarted.
Repossession of the land is not merely the reclaiming of homes; it is the necessary response to fulfil one’s absolute duty to God.
In fairness it must be added that for many Muslims, their story tells of a special respect for the other ‘peoples of the book’ and their deep desire is for a peace where all can dwell together in harmony.
For many Christians, especially Christians of the West involved politically in this conflict, it is not so much their defining myth that is called into play (the story of freedom and new life won through death and resurrection). Rather there are sub-plots that are evoked. Having retained the Jewish scriptures, for some the promises made in these still hold good and apply to those whom they now call ‘God’s ancient people’. For others the promises indeed hold good, but now apply to God’s ‘true Israel’, redefined as the Church (or that part of the church to which they belong). For a few, but a powerful few, the defining myth tells a story that culminates in the last great battle precisely here in the ‘Holy Land’ and they must work God’s will in evoking such a battle.
In fairness it must be added that for many Christians, their story tells of love for the other and a deep desire for peace where all can dwell together in harmony.
In the face of these stories, the secular world is helpless. Sociologists and anthropologists can study, record and evaluate the myths, but they are hampered by a pseudo-scientific need for ‘objectivity’. They stand outside, and myths can’t really be understood from outside.
Politicians and the Media also don’t really understand myths (they are deeply locked in their own) and so they offer ‘solutions’ that run contrary to the strongest feelings of the belligerents. This is doomed to failure. Many of the religious leaders are as firmly locked inside these key myths as the secular world is locked out. We need to recognise first that an essentially religious conflict is only amenable to a religious solution. Once this is clear, then it is a question of method; what sort of religious solution?
We have an example in South Africa where two men (two, not one) decided to try ‘Love your enemy’ with all the rigorous insight into what ‘love’ means as a theological concept. It is my contention that SoF has the necessary religious insight.
It is not a case of going to Jew or Muslim, or, for that matter, Christian, and saying, ‘Your myths are human creations; rejoice in that and take control of them instead of letting them control you.’ This would be several bridges too far! It is rather a case of studying the myths (together with them) and seeking the commonalities and picking up on the sub-plots that make for peace and increasing the stress to be laid on them as the stories are told. It is a matter of owning the stories, and telling them again in ways that open them up to a better life.
Many SoF members have contacts with Muslims and Jews, and many are in groups that think about theology. We also have the regional groups. These are places where such matters can not only be discussed, but also offered more widely. We can write the odd letter to the local paper, and why not the nationals? Some of us get an occasional airing on local radio, we could use it for this. And all done gently. We are in the business of winning hearts and minds, and at the end of the day we can’t tell people what they should think or believe, we can only encourage them to make the ideas their own.
Politicians and the Media also don’t really understand myths (they are deeply locked in their own).
Jerusalem I am aware that something similar was tried in what resulted in the ‘Alexandria accord’, but what I am suggesting is that we do it here, and do it again, and again, regularly offering our own particular insights and trying to get them heard more and more by the Media and by our own politicians. As things stand at present, this is very much a matter for British and US policy as well as for others. We need a ‘sea change’ in thinking, a change away from ‘road-maps’ and political ‘solutions’ and towards ways forward that understand and respect the religious insights of all in the region and beyond.
While I have tried to make out a case in some detail for our involvement in this particular issue, I wouldn’t want to lose sight of the others that I posted up earlier. You will be able to add still more.
As regards global justice, we have already seen a retelling of our myths in the Jubilee campaign and its successors. Active Christians in those campaigns (and they figure very largely) have brought hitherto largely-unquoted bits of Leviticus and Deuteronomy to the fore, thereby subtly changing the way we think about what was an obscure part of the Old Testament. There are, however, other myths still at work here that need a SoF make-over. There is, to take one example, a strong Christian lobby, especially in the most powerful parts of the West, that tells a story whereby God rewards his faithful with the gifts of this world, and these goods become an earnest of their standing in ‘eternity’.
As regards the climate, Christian (and other) stories are too often told in such a way that the planet merely becomes the stage, even a backdrop, for human activity, with no sense of interdependence. And there are still far too many myths that talk of ‘the world’ as bad, corrupt and irrelevant to the spirit.
I think there is a job to do in all these areas.
Fortunately, there are lots of allies, but in today’s society many of them have not had a chance to discover the religious tools that they need. ‘Religion’ to them is part of the problem, and they do not realise that ‘bad’ religion can only be withstood at the religious level. SoF can help; indeed is uniquely placed on the religious map to offer the most appropriate help. Naïve? Silly? Yes, quite probably. We have nothing to lose by trying, however, and I must admit a fondness for the naïve and silly – they have been known to change the world.
KitWiddows is Master of StThomas the Martyr Church, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and a SoFTrustee.