Many months ago, I shared the experience of my removal from Jehovah's Witnesses. To quickly recap, I had faded from meetings as an unbaptized publisher starting at about age 14 and had later decided to attend college against the wishes of my family. As I liked to write stories, I sought a job at the college newspaper and became a columnist.
I brought some of my newspapers home during the winter break of my sophomore year, the one time I visited my parents during college. My older brother, who had aspirations within the congregation, asked for a copy of my work. This year, I discovered that he brought the paper to the attention of the elders, who summarily announced (after I had gone back for the spring semester) that I was no longer an approved associate.
Many of you have asked what I could have written which would have gotten me in so much trouble. I drove to my old school today and I can now answer that question. Here is my article from the autumn of 1989. Please forgive the rambling. I was both 19 and under a deadline.
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Religion and conflict: Is nothing sacred?
Belfast, Northern Ireland. For twenty years, the city has been occupied by British troops which have not come close to resolving the Catholic-Protestant conflict. Most think of it as a political mistake, but there is something deeper to it. To me, Belfast is yet another example of the decay of Christianity.
I've been thinking lately that Christianity and Marxism have a lot in common. I believe both are fundamentally good systems, but everyone who claims to practice them seems to have mangled the original premises beyond recognition. Marx envisioned a nation where the State would wither away. However, communist countries do not seem to be making an effort to fulfill the basic plan. Similarly, Jesus envisioned a world of brotherhood. Still, many self-professed Christians in Belfast lob stones, grenades or whatever else they can find at their Christian 'brothers' as others have done for centuries. It's strange how we can point fingers at the warring Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims. We've been just as crazy. If any religion cannot resolve its conflicts from without, there is certainly no peace within, and perhaps no value.
I know I couldn't follow Marx just by calling myself a Marxist. I could not follow the Christ by having a massive Bible on the coffee table with five years of dust on it like almost everyone else, or by sporting a T-shirt and a bumper sticker proclaiming, "I gave my life to JESUS!" Somehow, I imagine that a great many people are convinced that the name alone is enough.
Of course, the invocation of that name is what justified the destruction of countless foreign cultures (the Aztecs, Incas, Toltecs, etc.), what justified the Inquisition, and what justifies a great amount of bigotry even today. It seems so fruitless to conditionally love one's neighbor, so meaningless to veto the First Commandment so that a sect or religion might dominate another. For that is what Belfast represents: chaos, a parody of what morals and ideals are supposed to encourage. It is what confuses me about the value of organized religion -- so much seems political, so much seems to be irreconcilable.
I believe the morals of religion have definite value to humankind. Nevertheless, I believe just as strongly that the belief in a master religion is as dangerous and absurd as the belief in a master race. For if one believes that one's group is superior to another's, it implies that an individual can also be greater than another. With that, the principle of equality is impossible to sustain, and a society that attempts to establish equality by law cannot when religion and state are (by law) separate and independent.
A hopeless conflict? No, if and only if human nature is compatible with moderation and tolerance. To a large extent, it is. For example, Canada and the United States are not particularly prone to religious rioting even though there are large percentages of Protestants and Catholics in both nations. Here, perhaps, the emphasis on superiority lies within the worshipped and not the worshipper.
I do not believe religion to be "the opium of the people": I do not mean to single out Christianity as the only religion with sectarian strife, as that is obviously not the case. Nevertheless, a religion must be critical of and responsible for its actions as a whole. Anything less will assure it of imminent decay.
