Open Writing

I had an email the other day whinging about something I said about religion. Said I was always making negative or derogatory comments about the church and people’s faith. This woman also said that my support for the Gay Mardi Gras “belonged to the days of Sodom and Gomorrah” and reminded me that “we all know what happened there”.

Yep, Sodom and Gomorrah are never out of my mind. She also ventured the opinion that my “obsession with parts of the human body was unnatural”. Ok, so maybe I obsess a bit now and then. But in fairness it depends on the body in question. Anyway, if you can’t upset someone what’s the point of writing? And religion is such a large, slow moving target anyway.

Most people I mix with know I’m an atheist and not one of those wishy washy fence sitting agnostics. Some kind souls even offer their commiserations about my absence of belief and tell me that they “find it very sad”. A more sensitive person or someone who actually cares might find that patronising. As it is I believe in lots of stuff. I believe that the price of petrol will rise before a long weekend, that a shed load of money will be tossed at marginal seats before an election and that there will a sex scandal regarding football players at some end of season party. The big difference here is that all those beliefs are evidence based.

A lot of people get a bit tetchy when you start talking about religion and I’ve never understood why. Is it because they know they’re on shaky ground and that in a lot of cases they’re leaving themselves open to ridicule? I don’t know. Some even have trouble using the “g” word. They use words like ‘life force’, ‘higher power’ or the old chestnut and classic avoidance phrase, ‘something out there’. Do they mean a sort of ET? It’s more acceptable I suppose to use something that won’t embarrass or offend.

Of course a number of people have suggested theories as to why we need a religion of any type. I think people need a god to explain the cycle of birth, tragedy, pestilence and death. Maybe it was a human construct that helped them understand why the crops failed or why Mog was trampled by a mammoth. That way we can blame or thank our concept of a god and shelve all the other crappy stuff under “Divine Plan.” Hate to think what would have had happened had things been left to chance though.

Why I get a bit testy about the whole business is that I see a trend emerging in recent years, especially in the States, although I think it’s getting as bad here, to forget that most mature nations have worked long and hard to ensure separation between church and state. In France they’ve been working at it since the 1800s and in Australia I think we’ve been reasonably successful. But the United States? Well that’s another question.

The religious right there seem as loony as any Islamic Fundamentalist you can dredge up. The other night I watched a documentary on another one of these aberrations of American religious culture. Almost fourteen thousand aberrations to be precise. All packed into this enormous stadium, running round shouting and revving each other up about spreading the gospel. Fourteen thousand blokes. No women. Fair enough I guess. Maybe the women are out the back making coffee and cake and the odd Pavlova.

Anyway all these blokes running round in an absolute frenzy of religious fervour. I think they were called the Promise Keepers. Probably good they kept those uppity feminists out the back as well. One of the speakers was from a Baptist University in the south (where else?), a guy called Robertson who said “Really, Mom’s place is back in the home, looking after the family” and “that we need to take a good look at this whole careerism thing with women and at the feminists who are part of the problem”. This is not verbatim but it’s very close. Now this peanut is not some redneck backwoods pastor. He had run against George Bush Senior for the Republican’s nomination and lost narrowly. And yes, women are excluded from such Promise Keeper’s gatherings.

Now apparently the fourteen thousand men go home and ‘explain’ all things of a spiritual nature, to the rest of the family. This makes sense as otherwise if there were women involved, this vital spiritual information might get misconstrued. So I don’t know that it’s such a bad idea after all. Imagine what would happen if we had women interpreting the scriptures and making spiritual decisions independently of their husbands, partners or lovers.

Although I would assume that in a good Promise Keeper home these husbands, partners and lovers would not be concurrent. Still, whatever works. But in the men’s favour, they’re not trying to subjugate their women, exclude them from the decision making process or deny them basic human rights. Not like those dreaded Islamic fundamentalists.

There’s no shortage of fruit loop cases out there in the religious Rockies. And whatever group surfaces you can be sure that men will be in control. It’s obvious that women haven’t yet accumulated the collected wisdom regarding compassion and common sense that we men enjoy. Perhaps in later years, though certainly not in my lifetime, we may even see a gay Pope. But for the time being I think it’s important that we don’t bring concepts like compassion, equity or understanding into any discussion regarding Christian values.

It only confuses people.

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To read Ian's novel Who Your Mates Are please click on http://ianarkell.wordpress.com/