The Religious Institution as an Obstacle to Civilization's Resilience

Source: http://www.furman.edu/academics/Religion/Pages/default.aspx

Religion has been Civilization’s bipolar institution. On the one hand, it serves as the standard of values, morality, and meaning, and many of its priests and adherents have served as society’s role models as they have faithfully upheld their hollowed ideals. When it wakes up to the new biospheric paradigm, the religious institution will likely be instrumental in midwifing humanity through the difficult times of transition. On the other hand, religion has traditionally legitimated the social stratification and inequalities upon which Civilization has been built.[i] Given our natural proclivity for self-interest, the upward distribution of wealth and power must not have been an easy sell to the general population, even as the cultural memory of the forager world was fading away. It was the religious leaders who, through their central position between the cosmos and humanity, legitimated the upward distribution of power and wealth. They served this critical role in the early empires of China, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Central and South America.[ii]  “Priesthood served as a kind of cosmic brokerage firm,” writes Frederic Bender, “…subordinating the gods to human ends and offering a seemingly unquestionable account of ultimate meaning in return for obedience.”[iii] Even those religions such as Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism that initially formed either independent or even antagonistic to the state often eventually became coopted by the rulers. The papacy legitimized European powers for millennia, and Islam served the same role in West Asia and North Africa for the caliphates and the Ottoman Empire.[iv] And many religious leaders today still serve these traditional roles, as exemplified by the Buddhists in Myanmar, the Islamists in Iran, and the Christians in the United States.[v] Quid pro quo, the world’s religions have gathered much wealth and power onto themselves. And so the religious institutions are by in large a conservative force for the same reason that all institutions are: they have the most to lose during times of changing paradigms.[vi]

Evangelical Christian leaders lay hands and pray over Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at the New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, on Sept. 21, 2016.Reuters

As for the ecological crisis and the paradigm shift to a biospheric consciousness, much of the religious institution, especially in the United States, has been particularly unhelpful. The Catholic priest Thomas Berry: “After dealing with suicide, homicide and genocide, our Western Christian moral code collapses completely; it cannot deal with biocide or geocide.  Nor have church authorities made any sustained protest against the violence being done to the planet.”[vii] In the United States, much of the religious institution has cynically aligned itself with the wealthy elite. Given that there are only two political parties in the United States to represent the multidimensional complex of ideologies and interests, both the Democratic and Republican parties are a cobbling together of constituents with different, sometimes even antagonistic, values. In their alliance, the religious right has been willing to turn its back on all the inequality and suffering perpetrated by wealth and military for the “red meat” issues of abortion, anti-homosexuality, racism, and a concept they call in Orwellian newspeak, “family values.”[viii] Mark Lilla says of the new Protestantism: “It preached good citizenship and national pride, economic good sense and the proper length of a gentleman’s beard. But it was too ashamed to proclaim the message found on every page of the Gospels: that you must change your life.”[ix] 

St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican.

The priests and their institutions have relinquished their alleged roles as the leaders of wisdom. Instead, by the authority that they hold as the (self-appointed) representatives of God and intermediaries to the cosmos, they have legitimized the cruelties of inequality and environmental destruction. From a cultural evolutionary perspective, they are denizens of some of the developmentally simplest (Medieval and Early nation-state) stages of consciousness and represent an obstacle to needed change. It is particularly disconcerting that, far from acting as visionaries, many religious leaders in the United States have actively promoted backward notions of society, advancing what have been variously called American exceptionalism, Republican Theocracy, and the “City Upon a Hill,” this last one being a reference from the book of Mathew.[x]

United States Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel, near Coloado Springs, Colorado, designed by Walter Netsch, constructed between 1959 and 1962.

Common to many of them is the notion that the United States will be a Christian nation, “a people and nation chosen by God to play a unique and even redemptive role in the world.”[xi] For some of the more extreme groups, such as the Apocalypse-fixated Evangelicals and the New Apostolic Reformation, government, economies, and society must be brought under Christian control as a pre-requisite for the Apocalypse or the End of Days.[xii] For this large minority of the American population, it is as if the dignity of the Enlightenment never occurred, or the humility of Modernist epistemology or of Post-modern relativity.[1] They have ignored each of these important philosophical movements. Indeed, they have been accused of leading America’s Disenlightenment.[xiii] Given the religious right’s retro-evolutionary influence in American education, economics, equality, science, the climate debate, and biological research, they have clearly relinquished their roles as the leaders of wisdom and compassion. They have actively combated both precepts of wisdom defined above: “the discerning of reality,” and “the using of this knowledge as motivation for action, with the specific aim of increasing happiness and diminishing suffering.” 

Meenakshi Amman Temple (early 17th century) in Madurai, India.

Just because the religious institution is not performing its role in the West does not mean it does not have a very important role to play. Since the dawn of civilization, religion has been a catalyst for action. Indeed, some anthropologists now believe that it was not agriculture that set the stage for religion (and the other institutions), but that it was the other way around: the coming together of foragers for religious ceremony some ten thousand years ago began settlements and the need for agriculture.[xiv] Farming’s great revolution may have been a consequence of humanity’s spiritual and existential quest.  According to the anthropologist Leslie White, we will again need religion to revolutionize our worldview and behaviors. In The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis, White concluded that, “Since the roots of our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or not.”[xv] To replace Christianity’s utilitarian view of nature for a more modest one, he suggests that we follow the lead of Saint Francis of Assisi, who “tried to substitute the idea of the equality of all creatures, including man, for the idea of man’s limitless rule of creation.”

Wat Arun, Bangkok, Thailand.

There have been some brave trailblazers, including Richard Cizik, who served as vice president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals, an influential lobbying organization that represents 45,000 churches.[xvi] Until he resigned for suggesting tolerance for homosexuality during an interview on NPR, he was a leading advocate for addressing the issue of global warming.[xvii] Pope John Paul II declared for the 1990 World Day of Peace that “the ecological crisis is a moral issue,” and Pope Benedict XVI made environmental issues so much part of his message that he has been dubbed the green pope.[xviii]

Next in 2013, the Argentine Cardinal, Jorge Mario Bergoglio chose as his papal name Francis, the patron saint of the poor and of ecology, signaling a devotion to humility, simple living, and the poor and marginalized.[xix] Given his and his predecessor’s emphasis on the poor and the environment, perhaps Leslie White’s hope for a religious remedy may be at hand. Pope Francis began delivering on that hope with his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’ “On Care for Our Common Home.” Hearing “both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor”, Pope Francis produced one of the most powerful theological arguments for reintegrating the environment and Civilization within the framework of his Christian faith, an “integral ecology,” he called it. Simultaneously, in Britain religious leaders from numerous faiths signed the “Lambeth Declaration on Climate Change,” which called for Civilization’s immediate transition towards “a low carbon economy.” Just as importantly, there are numerous religious organizations all over the world that have already taken concrete actions, such as planting trees, cleaning up waste sites, turning empty lots into gardens, advocating for the poor, installing solar units, and affecting pro-environmental legislation.[xx] 

Environmental leadership is ripe for the picking. Historically, the power behind religion have been used to great effect by activists, most recently by Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Junior. Whoever become the spokespeople and leaders of humanity’s next stage will also become its next generation of heroes. Given their implicit affiliation with wisdom, God, and the good, the religious institutions and spiritual leaders are best positioned to take up the call. Of the several powerful institutions, religion could most easily change from being a major obstacle to becoming a catalyst for the punctuated jump in consciousness that is being required of us all to live on the newest version of this planet. 

REFERENCES

[1] A defining feature of early 20th century Modernism was its impassioned interest in epistemology, which is the study of knowledge, questioning particularly its limits and validity. Mid-to-late 20th century Postmodernism recognized the great diversity in worldviews across cultures and the consequent loss of absolute certainty that could be claimed by any one perspective. 

[i] Quigley (1961), Bender (2003), Hassan (2007).

Quigley, C. (1961) The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis. Liberty Fund, Indianapolis.

Bender, F.L. (2003) The Culture of Extinction: Toward a Philosophy of Deep Ecology, Humanity Books, Amherst, New York.

Hassan, F.A. (2007) The Lie of History: Nation-States and the Contradictions of Complex Societies, pp. 169-196, in Constanza, R., Graumlich, L.J., and Steffen, W. (Editors), Sustainability or Collapse: An Integrated History and Future of People on Earth. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

[ii] Quigley (1961), Bender (2003), Fukuyama (2011). 

Fukuyama, F. (2011) The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York.

[iii] Bender (2003:145).

[iv] Hassan (2007).

[v] For example: 

Coclanis, P.A. (2013) Terror in Burma: Buddhists vs. Muslims. World Affairs Journal.

Siddiqui, U. (2016, September 8) Muslim Minorities in Peril: The Rise of Buddist Violence in Asia. Aljazeera.

[vi] Bowles, S. (2012) Warriors, Levelers, and the Role of Conflict in Human Social Evolution, Science, v. 336, pp. 876-879.

[vii] Berry (1988:77).

Berry,T. (1988) The Dream of the Earth, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco.

[viii] For a superb analysis of the religious right’s rising influence in American politics, see Phillips (2006). Also Hacker and Pierson (2010:202).

Phillips, K. (2006) American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. Viking, New York.

Hacker, J.S., and Pierson, P. (2010) Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class. Simon and Schuster, New York.

[ix] Lilla, M. (2007, August 19) The Politics of God, The New York Times Magazine.

[x] Reagan (1989), Phillips (2006:171-217). In his book No Apologies the 2012 Presidential candidate Mitt Romney argued for American Exceptionalism and, on page 29, castigated his opponent Barak Obama for not believing in the idea (Romney, 2010).

Reagan, R. (1989, January 11) Farewell Address to the Nation. Available at http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1989/011189i.htm. 

Romney (2010) No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, St. Martin’s Press, New York.

[xi] Barber (1995), Phillips (2006). Quote from Phillips (2006:125, 171-217).  The religious Right’s take on American exceptionalism is the latest of many in the concept’s nearly two hundred year history.

Barber, B.R. (1995) Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism are Reshaping the World, Ballantine Books, New York.

[xii] Tabrachnick R. (2011), The Evangelicals Engaged in Spiritual Warfar, National Public Radio, Available at http://www.npr.org/2011/08/24/139781021/the-evangelicals-engaged-in-spiritual-warfare.  Accessed September 2, 2011.

[xiii] Phillips (2006:217). The American fundamentalist Christians and the Islamist fundamentalists share common principles, but the exclusivity that gives them their identity makes the other their most immediate enemy.

[xiv] For example, see Balter (1998, 2005), Mann (2011).

Balter, M. (1998) Why Settle Down? The Mystery of Communities. Science, v. 282, pp. 1442-1445.

Balter, M. (2005) The Seeds of Civilization. Smithsonian, Issue 5.

[xv] White, L. (1967) The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis, Science, v. 155, pp. 1203-1207. Access possible from https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=The+Historical+Roots+of+Our+Ecological+Crisis&*

[xvi] NPR (2008) Rev. Richard Cizik On God And Global Warming.  Available at  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97690760. Accessed January 15, 2012.

[xvii] Heilbrunn (2007), NPR (2008), Pullian (2008).

Heilbrunn, J. (2007, May 27) The Gospel of Dobson, New York Times. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/books/review/Heilbrunn2-t.html?_r=0.  Accessed March 1, 2013.

Pulliam, S. (2008, December 11) Richard Cizik Resigns from the National Association of Evangelicals. Available at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/decemberweb-only/150-42.0.html.  Accessed March 1, 2013.

[xviii] Pope John Paul II (1989), Stone (2008), Faris (2011). 

Pope John Paul II (1989) Message of his Holiness for the Celebration of the World Peace Day.  Available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/messages/peace/documents/hf_jp-ii_mes_19891208_xxiii-world-day-for-peace_en.html.  Accessed February 17, 2013.

Stone, D. (2008) The Green Pope, The Daily Beast, Newsweek.  Available at http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2008/04/16/the-green-pope.html.  Accessed February 17, 2013.

Faris, S. (2011, April) The Father, the Sun, and the Holy Spirit, The Atlantic, pp. 16-17.

[xix] Alpert (2013), Christiansen (2013), Chu (2013), Dias (2013).

Alpert, E. (2013, March 13) Why Does the Pope Change his Name? Why ‘Franics’? The Los Angeles Times.

Chu, H. (2013, March 13) First New World Pontiff Faces Old Challenges. The Los Angeles Times.. 

Dias, E. (2013, November 15) The Real Reason Pope Francis Posed with Anti-Fracking Activists. Time.

[xx] Motavalli (2002), Atran and Ginges (2012). The Roman Catholic Church’s official pronatal policies and unbendable stance against contraception and abortion will certainly continue to hobble the institution as it tries to remain relevant in a world with problems a universe away from the one it helped to create (See, for example, Ruxin and Habinshuti (2011), Gibson (2015).

Motavalli, J. (2002, November/December) Stewards of the Earth, emagazine, Volume XIII(6). Available at http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Reln481/E-mag/Main-article.htm.  Accessed March 1, 2013.

Atran, S., and Ginges, J. (2012) Religious and Sacred Imperatives in Human Conflict, Science, v. 336, pp. 855-857.

Ruxin and Habinshuti (2011) Crowd Control in Rwanda, Nature.

Gibson, D. (2015, February 11) Pope Francis: Opting to Not Have Children a ‘Selfish Choice’. Religious News Service.