Cathedral City, California
March 1, 2023
Poor me! A man without a religion, without a decent lie to call my own. --Percival Everett, Erasure
Okay, seriously, this post won't be about politics. I've ridden that horse so much lately that it needs a rubdown and a rest over at the livery stable. And very soon I'll be astride the beast again. So today, for a change, I'll rant about my second most favorite subject, religion.
Religion, I hasten to say, isn't always a bad thing, though I've pretty much put it in my own rearview mirror. There are some benign affirming aspects of religious practice, such as the celebration or observances of various passages through life--births, marriages, deaths, and a few other in-between things. With their organized approaches to such passages, religions sometimes give us a measure of comfort and a sense of belonging, whether we actually believe the mumbo jumbo in the liturgical background about The One Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; or heaven and hell; or the exacting requirements of Allah or Hashem; or whatever else a religion might have that is designed to keep the faithful on their toes (or their knees), and which is generally a pain in the ass and pretty difficult to comprehend using ordinary human logic.
But even the things that are out and out weird can serve a purpose, and that purpose is (drumroll, please) to take our minds off the absolutely mundane and terminal nature of human existence. We function physically pretty much the same as the rest of our fellow-animals, about which we hold no illusions as to their going into an afterlife, and all that, except for a few sappy people who talk about doggie heaven. For our own species (since we suffer from a seemingly unalterable conviction of uniqueness and a profound sense of our superiority to all other beings), we hold different aspirations, as scientifically untenable as they may be. By praying five times a day, or by attending worship regularly, or by observing silly dietary restrictions, we sometimes successfully occupy our minds and bodies when we might otherwise be pacing the floor in despair in light of the biological inevitability of the closeout of our existences. By believing that we are not, as individuals, simply going to cease to be at some point, we can stave off the existential terror and depression that sometimes plague us as a species. We might be filled with hope for a better land beyond this one, or terror that if we misbehave we'll go to a worse one, but, thanks to most religions, we don't have to be content with the blackout end of everything for all time.
However, beyond a rather superficial acquaintance with the basic theology of our religions, most of us don't really dwell on the specifics of salvation and eternal life. Unless--and this is a big unless--we take the whole thing too seriously. That generally happens when a society or subgroup within a society puts too much emphasis on religion. In our own country we profess to practice religious neutrality and freedom of worship. We have no official "state" church, as many countries do. But by having none, and by insisting on accommodating a multitude of religions on a more or less equal footing, including cults and quackish quasi-religions on the lunatic fringe of even the general lunacy of standard theology and epistemology, our common sense as a nation has subordinated itself to religion rather than what I think was the original plan, namely, to free ourselves from its domination.
In contrast, the average western European country has a long and strong tradition favoring Christianity, and also one Christian denomination over another. The United Kingdom has an official religion, the Church of England. Although it tolerates other religions--Catholicism, Islam, various branches of Protestantism, and so on--as a sovereign nation, it is staunchly in favor of the Anglican church, even putting its clergy on the national payroll and in the government. Americans might think this to be heavy-handed and prejudicial, but in reality it works very well. In the U. K. one's default religion is the good old C. of E., and the rights and privileges of that church are available to all without any need to search for them or be convinced of the mystical or theological logic of the church. The Anglican church is just there, like convenience stores or the post office, in almost every town and village, and if you want it, you can have it, but if you choose to ignore it or go to another church, well, that's okay too. As a result, none of it really matters much to the average Brit. And just to reinforce the relative irrelevance of the Church of England, it is not some imam or pope who rules over the church temporal, but rather the good old King himself. I mean, what religion that takes itself seriously would place a secular hereditary monarch, the latest sinner in a long dynastic line of them, at the pinnacle of its religion, for God's sake?! Oh, sure, there are the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, ostensibly the highest prelates in the whole outfit, but they are appointed by--guess who--the monarch himself, on the advice of the Parliament. There's no goofing around trying to figure out who is closest to the Almighty or any of that.
Other European countries have similar setups. In the Scandinavian countries Lutheranism is the state religion, at least insofar as the monarch is required by law to be a member. In the Netherlands it's the Dutch Reformed Church, not an official state church, but one with a history of being the default church and the one that the monarch belongs to. In all these countries the utter lack of interest in these churches by the citizens, except maybe as places to have funerals or weddings, is profound. I read some time back that despite the fact that Holland was founded as a staunchly Protestant nation, the most prevalent religious preference in the country is Roman Catholicism (by a plurality, not a majority), simply because most Dutch Protestants don't give a shit about church at all. Good stuff. And really, much better than having no official religion, because having no official denomination, or at least a denomination that has traditionally been the preferred one, creates a dangerous vacuum. In the U.S. that vacuum gets filled by wacky fucksticks and charlatans instead of by benign and feckless vicars and pastors.
I propose that we adopt the United Church of Christ, or U.C.C., as the state religion here in the U.S. Some readers might not know anything about the U.C.C. Let me assure you that it's liberal, safe, tolerant, and above all, unobtrusive. You want to go, then go. You want to stay away, then stay away. You want to take communion, then take it, or not. You want to attend the Christmas Eve service or the Easter Sunday get together, have at it. You want to believe in Jesus, great. You don't, not really a problem. But it won't chase you around or fill your ears with mealy-mouthed promises of the life everlasting or the gospel of prosperity or try to make you vote for anyone. Of course, it would like your dollars, but it doesn't demand them, and to be sure, by its relatively progressive stance on social issues it telegraphs its political preferences, but it doesn't try too hard to piss anybody off. It says it believes in the trinity and the virgin birth and all that other standard Christian stuff, but it doesn't try to shove it down your throat. And I like the name. It sounds almost like a labor union. United Church of Christ, local 1431. Solidarity forever. Its denominational polity is pretty laid back, too. No bishops or other hierarchical know-it-alls to lord it over the faithful, just ministers affiliated with a loosely-knit, democratically-run synod that functions as a guarantor of pension benefits for the clergy, and puts some checks and balances in place in case an individual congregation gets too carried away in some direction or another. And the congregation gets to hire and fire the preacher.
Under my plan, if the U.C.C. became the state religion of the United States, the nation wouldn't have to spend money on it, just support it "morally," so to speak. Maybe a U.C.C. clergyperson would open sessions of Congress with a religiously neutral and meaningless prayer. (Truth be told, that already happens, even without a state church.) But here's where, under my idea, things would take a profitable turn. The state religion would be the only one that enjoyed tax-exempt status for its property and contributions to it by the public. Other religions would be free to exist, but they'd have to pay property tax and tax on their incomes just like any other business, and they wouldn't be classified as charitable entities.
Of course all this would require the repeal of a portion of the First Amendment to the Constitution, but what the hell, it's high time that happened. And yeah, the Catholics and Baptists would have a shit fit, but fuck 'em. It's not like we'd be telling them they can't exist, just that they have to hop off the gravy train. And most importantly, by adopting the U.C.C. as our national religion we'd be telling the rest of the world, as the British and the Scandinavians and others do, that our religion is the foundation of our priorities. Sure, there'd be a bit of that Jesus on the cross stuff, but we already have to put up with that a lot anyway, and besides, does anybody really believe any of that? Come on. The main thing would be that the social and moral stances embraced by the denomination would be our national social and moral stances as a country. And what are they? Racial justice, social justice, gender inclusiveness, open and affirming marriage, and so on. I mean, what more could you ask for?
Organized religions have always been about politics anyway. Let's quit pretending that our politics has no religion. If we believe in gender equality, same-sex marriage, a woman's right to choose, racial justice, aid to the poor, etc., etc., etc., then the U.C.C. is the way to go. The main thing here, and I know I'm repeating myself, is that NOT having a national religion has proved to be a lot more dangerous and divisive to our nation than having a nice comfortable one would be.
So let’s quit our national pretense of religious neutrality, which allows fundamentally anti-democratic and exclusionary retrograde groups like Scientologists, Southern Baptists, Catholics, and Muslims to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with religions that actually believe in universal human justice. It’ll be the next best thing to no religion at all, that higher state that other species appear to have achieved.
