Keep YOUR religion out of MY life
Jul. 1st, 2007 05:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avanta7First things first.
I am a Christian. I believe in God. (The two are not mutually inclusive.) I attend the church of my choice fairly regularly. I sing and pray and worship in community with other like-minded believers. I recite the Apostle's Creed without cringing and partake of communion at the appropriate times. My faith brings me great joy and peace and comfort.
I am not a fundamentalist. Nor do I take the Bible literally. My Bible is a sacred text that contains truth as filtered through fallible human experience; it should be interpreted metaphorically and symbolically rather than literally. My God gave me a brain and expects me to use it. S/he expects me to think for myself, to make decisions for myself, to act in accordance with His will to the best of my understanding.
Most of you regular readers know that I walked away from religion and took a ten-year detour through drug- and alcohol-addiction before cleaning up some 16 years ago. That ten-year detour was not a result of losing my faith; rather, the opposite: because I began drinking and taking drugs in my late teens, I felt the God I grew up with couldn't possibly care about me, that He had in fact already condemned me to Hell, and what was the point in continuing to believe and trust in that God?
When I finally went back to the church after ten years of trying to chemically lobotomize myself, I discovered I no longer felt welcome in the denomination in which I was raised. That God had become too small, and people no longer accepted me -- I was tainted somehow, unclean, not "one of them." But a deep and abiding faith in God still lurked in my heart. Rather than stay somewhere I wasn't wanted, I turned my back on that faith tradition and began searching again for something else, somewhere else, people who had a God I could believe in and, more importantly, trust. Luckily I found a denomination that fit my new concept of a Higher Power, and this new church family loved me and accepted me and helped me repair a seriously eroded sense of self-worth.
All of the preceding is important simply to say the following:
Religious faith is a deeply personal and, in my view, private issue. I have no quarrel with you who believe differently than I do. You have the same freedom of choice that I do. I welcome a discussion of our differences, as long as that discussion is conducted with mutual respect. The same goes for political beliefs.
Making decisions about social and/or political issues based on one's core beliefs and/or interpretation of the intention of one's Higher Power(s) is the bounden duty of any concerned individual; the trouble comes when you, whose core beliefs/interpretation differs from mine, want to force me to comply with your decision about those same social and/or political issues or, worse, want to make the decision for me.
Ever since the 1980s and the rise of the so-called "Moral Majority" and its successors, a creeping fundamentalism has invaded the political processes of these United States, specifically in the Republican party. Over the last 20-some odd years, a loud contingent of chiefly fundamentalist right-wing religious groups has arisen which wishes to impose its religious views on social issues upon the population at large. Unfortunately, public figures and politicians on the right have increasingly and publicly pandered to these religious groups, believing (rightfully so) that their chances of election/re-election is dependent on how slavishly they adhere to the Religious Right agenda.
Frankly, this frightens me. Because it seems the purpose of the Religious Right agenda is to change the United States from a republic to a theocracy, with highly personal life choices made for me, regardless of the dictates of my own conscience.
Hyperbole? I don't think so.
What do you call it when the government prevents the removal of life support from a woman in a long-term vegetative state because it's "against God" to end a life? Or tells a woman she can't terminate her pregnancy via a particular procedure because her life isn't in danger, and instead forces her to give birth to a seriously deformed infant with no chance of a decent life, again because it's "against God"? Or dictates that science textbooks must give a religiously-based origin of the universe "theory" equal weight to the scientifically-tested theory of evolution?
As I said earlier, God gave me a brain and expects me to use it. And frankly, my interpretation of God's will is quite probably different from yours. Instead of saying "It's God's will that I support/oppose [insert issue of your choice]", we should defend our decisions with sound secular arguments, even if those decisions are made out of spiritual biases.
~~~~
A contribution to the Blog Against Theocracy Blogswarm, July 1-4, 2007.
First Freedom First
Theocracy Watch
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
Sojourners
I am a Christian. I believe in God. (The two are not mutually inclusive.) I attend the church of my choice fairly regularly. I sing and pray and worship in community with other like-minded believers. I recite the Apostle's Creed without cringing and partake of communion at the appropriate times. My faith brings me great joy and peace and comfort.
I am not a fundamentalist. Nor do I take the Bible literally. My Bible is a sacred text that contains truth as filtered through fallible human experience; it should be interpreted metaphorically and symbolically rather than literally. My God gave me a brain and expects me to use it. S/he expects me to think for myself, to make decisions for myself, to act in accordance with His will to the best of my understanding.
Most of you regular readers know that I walked away from religion and took a ten-year detour through drug- and alcohol-addiction before cleaning up some 16 years ago. That ten-year detour was not a result of losing my faith; rather, the opposite: because I began drinking and taking drugs in my late teens, I felt the God I grew up with couldn't possibly care about me, that He had in fact already condemned me to Hell, and what was the point in continuing to believe and trust in that God?
When I finally went back to the church after ten years of trying to chemically lobotomize myself, I discovered I no longer felt welcome in the denomination in which I was raised. That God had become too small, and people no longer accepted me -- I was tainted somehow, unclean, not "one of them." But a deep and abiding faith in God still lurked in my heart. Rather than stay somewhere I wasn't wanted, I turned my back on that faith tradition and began searching again for something else, somewhere else, people who had a God I could believe in and, more importantly, trust. Luckily I found a denomination that fit my new concept of a Higher Power, and this new church family loved me and accepted me and helped me repair a seriously eroded sense of self-worth.
All of the preceding is important simply to say the following:
Religious faith is a deeply personal and, in my view, private issue. I have no quarrel with you who believe differently than I do. You have the same freedom of choice that I do. I welcome a discussion of our differences, as long as that discussion is conducted with mutual respect. The same goes for political beliefs.
Making decisions about social and/or political issues based on one's core beliefs and/or interpretation of the intention of one's Higher Power(s) is the bounden duty of any concerned individual; the trouble comes when you, whose core beliefs/interpretation differs from mine, want to force me to comply with your decision about those same social and/or political issues or, worse, want to make the decision for me.
Ever since the 1980s and the rise of the so-called "Moral Majority" and its successors, a creeping fundamentalism has invaded the political processes of these United States, specifically in the Republican party. Over the last 20-some odd years, a loud contingent of chiefly fundamentalist right-wing religious groups has arisen which wishes to impose its religious views on social issues upon the population at large. Unfortunately, public figures and politicians on the right have increasingly and publicly pandered to these religious groups, believing (rightfully so) that their chances of election/re-election is dependent on how slavishly they adhere to the Religious Right agenda.
Frankly, this frightens me. Because it seems the purpose of the Religious Right agenda is to change the United States from a republic to a theocracy, with highly personal life choices made for me, regardless of the dictates of my own conscience.
Hyperbole? I don't think so.
What do you call it when the government prevents the removal of life support from a woman in a long-term vegetative state because it's "against God" to end a life? Or tells a woman she can't terminate her pregnancy via a particular procedure because her life isn't in danger, and instead forces her to give birth to a seriously deformed infant with no chance of a decent life, again because it's "against God"? Or dictates that science textbooks must give a religiously-based origin of the universe "theory" equal weight to the scientifically-tested theory of evolution?
As I said earlier, God gave me a brain and expects me to use it. And frankly, my interpretation of God's will is quite probably different from yours. Instead of saying "It's God's will that I support/oppose [insert issue of your choice]", we should defend our decisions with sound secular arguments, even if those decisions are made out of spiritual biases.
~~~~
A contribution to the Blog Against Theocracy Blogswarm, July 1-4, 2007.
First Freedom First
Theocracy Watch
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
Sojourners
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no subject
Date: Jul. 2nd, 2007 12:23 am (UTC)My own faith has traversed the territory from hardcore fundamentalism to atheism to agnosticism and points in between. In the end I believe what you do - it is a highly personal issue that can be dealt with respectfully and intelligently. I appreciate your sharing your thoughts and your experiences.
no subject
Date: Jul. 2nd, 2007 03:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jul. 2nd, 2007 12:53 am (UTC)What set you off? :) (dare I ask, raising the blast shields)
Lower the shields.
Date: Jul. 2nd, 2007 03:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jul. 2nd, 2007 08:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jul. 2nd, 2007 12:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jul. 2nd, 2007 02:50 pm (UTC)"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." ~Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)