Lets hear it for religion. Come on, whoo-hooo! If there's anything in the world that polarises people more than tax, then religion must be it. Actually, what in the hell am I saying, everybody hates tax.
Way back in the day, when I was merely a hazy undergraduate trying to figure out whether getting into law was a good idea or merely something I was talked into, I ended up taking a number of 'religion' papers to satisfy my curiosity. You know, they say that people tend to take up Arts majors that relate to something in their background. So people who do Politics tend to have power and control issues, economists are preoccupied with money, philosophers are intense dreamers, psychology students... well, you get the picture.
Religion had been a substantial part of my younger days, even though I myself haven't been 'religious' since I started to become self-aware just prior to puberty (and no, not 'self-aware' in a grubby way, more the point at which my social awareness started to kick in). Growing up in small town New Zealand usually means that being exposed to Christianity of varying sorts is kind of par for the course, whether you were swept in up in Evangelism or just plain dragged along to listen to a lot of Catholic dirges every Easter.
Learning about the greater religious experience was therefore something I needed to get out of my system, if not only so that I could make a concrete interpretation of all the kinds of religion I experienced in my less-that-twenty-years in the Mount. As I say, once my social awareness kicked in then rote-learning a bunch of morality just plain conflicted with all the things my (unusual) immediate family taught me about the world outside the boundaries of my town, and indeed, my country. Having one uncle who's a committed Hare Krishna, another who's a committed atheist, another who's a committed hedonist, and another who's a spiritual healer all kind of confused matters for a young fulla.
Actually, learning about religion in this way is one of the reasons I advocate better education for just about everyone, besides the fact that it made "John Safran Vs. God" even funnier (C4 Tuesday nights, a must see), it kind of demystified many of the things that are said about 'alien' religions.
Consequently, I now know that many of the things currently being spouted about Islam are stereotypes and/or outright lies, and learnt lots of disturbing things about Christianity that the church-going types like to keep under wraps. One great passage I read from some Eight Century Islamic scholars called Christianity "the people of the three gods" (father, son, holy ghost), and talked about them being "ruled by a god-king" (the Pope). They were also "barbarous pigs" who wallowed in filth while his city had running water.
This isn't the place to engage in a historical debate about these claims being true or not, but the perspective that scholar brought was profoundly influential on my undergraduate mind. For one thing, it shattered many of the illusions and mythology I'd bought into about my Judeo-Christian background. Hell, about our J-C background.
It seems to me that this is what is missing from the arguments of many of the people who vigorously demand more and greater input for religion in our politics. While I'm on the subject, and having mentioned C4, it might be good for the station (or maybe the other alternative station, Māori TV) to pick up a very good documentary called "With God on Our Side: George W. Bush and the Rise of the Religious Right in America". If you've ever wondered just how much power a concerted religious movement in can acquire, you might want to watch it. In fact, you need to watch it.
Like I say, our laws and morality are already pretty much dominated by the guidelines established within Christianity. Which has long lead me to believe that the drive for more influence by Evangelists or Fundamentalists is really a demand for the power to impose these values on members of our society who aren't following them closely enough.
And frankly, that's a little frightening. Why? Not because J-C values are at all bad, except for the ones that are all too out of place in the Twenty-First Century, but because imposing anything almost automatically means that someone in our society is likely to be left on the outer. And if history has demonstrated anything again and again it's that marginalization, has "bad" outcomes for the group out in the cold.
To follow up on my rant from last week, there are groups and political leanings in this country that aren't too concerned if minorities are left on the outer in this way. In all likelihood having to deal with them would result in having to open their minds to 'alien' or 'new' ways of doing or understanding things. And when they are more often than not unwilling to question the infallibility of their own religion, what hope for a better life will be given to the people they close out of our society? And what hope will there be for our society to improve by understanding how they see us?
Do we really want the type of suppressive stagnancy that characterised New Zealand in the mid-Twentieth Century to return?