Wearing religion on our sleeve.

At the time when Jesus started on his ministry and surrounded himself with twelve disciples (and some of their wifes)  it was unlikely they wore any kind of identifiable clothes or material that would have said ‘we belong to a very special kind of religious sect’.  Imagine no mitres, no chasuble, alb, stole, rings, croizier, just simple everyday clothes.  What made Jesus and his disciples truly distinguishable was what they did for the poor, the indigent , sick and infirm.  Only then did Jesus speak of the 'good news' often in the practised form of parables.  What most of us Christians and certainly the religious leaders of his time often missed or grasped is that these parables were usually expressed in upside down and contradictory terms against a  world of strict and accepted cultural, moral and religious values.  If anyone wanted to become his followers the ‘upside down’ kingdom values were the only way.  The narrow gate, eye of the needle represented the love and compassion necessary to bring kingdom values into practise. Jesus never wrote anything down, or dictated any rules or instructed anyone that what he did or spoke of should be formed into strict dogma or doctrine.   At the same time Jesus certainly never suggested that his listeners should become Jewish or insisted that they attend the synagogue at least once a week.  Instead, compassion and Love were to be practised everyday. Jesus associated as easily with despised tax collectors, as he did with prostitutes or women and men who did not even belong to his Jewish community. He was 100 percent inclusive and frequenly challenged the norms .  Jesus and his disciples healed the sick, cured the blind, forgave the sinner and promised listeners that they should pick up their cross and live a life to be lived to the full.

To live such a joy filled life all that was required is ‘repentance’ from the original Greek word metanoia meaning a 'change of mind and heart'.  And for most of us this can be a totally up-side down experience especially when dealing with difficult situations and people.  All you need we are told is a total trust in God  with his added proviso that his Holy Spirit will  then act as our guide, and teach us all we need to know to become true believers in this new way of life.  In so doing miracles will become an everyday event, even to the point of seeing people being raised from the dead. 

You would have thought that most of us would have jumped to the chance to give up our pain and suffering, but not so.  The ego quickly came to our rescue by immediately spreading  doubt that anything could be that easy.  And soon Jesus message seemed far too difficult and demanding for most of us   After listening to him talk about the laborers in the vineyard who all received the same amount of pay regardless of the number of hours they put in – we quickly figured this model was never going to become popular or fair.   What about giving up our hard earned and respected social position in life and sitting at the lowest end of the table?  No that wasn’t something most of us are ready to accept.  We worked to hard for that.  That guy Jesus and his disciples who looked like beggars were probably crazy and should be quickly chased out of town.

Today Jesus’ promise remains as true as ever,  yet few of us are willing to trust him so completely that we prefer to play it safe by putting our primary trust in worldly institutions instead.  Here the wages are scaled according to our performance while highly trained doctors and nurses will take care of our health.  As for concerns for the poor, sick and indigent, well various government organizations will take care of most of them. By the way political rules also help us to avoid any need for direct contact with the less fortunate. And, those who call themselves ‘street people’ probably prefer to live that way anyway. 

As for the worldly institutions even the religious ones have taken up the accepted social structure first introduced by the Roman Emperor Constantine.  Roman Catholic clergy today still follow a strict code or regimen with regard its political structure, dress and hierarchy,  which is based on Constantine’s military background. Up until the time of Constantine Christians were under constant threat of being persecuted in the most violent of ways by various Roman rulers.  After that the roles were reversed and the Christians became the persecutors.  History is filled with many dark periods of religious persecution. I  will spare readers the horrific details.  However while persecution may be less obvious today a lot of fervent and very militant Christians have trouble being compassionate with people living on the margins of life, particularly those with life styles other than prescribed by the their religious leaders. Calls for compassion are quickly dismissed in the most negative terms or un-Christian ways.  By denying any responsibility for such damaging teachings they  quickly deny them   by calling it ‘bashing  of the faith’! (their faith I guess)

"Religious symbols are contentious when displayed in the public sphere. They are seen as territorial marking, like a soldier planting a flag or a dog lifting its leg. So naturally the symbol of the Red Cross was rejected by Muslim countries, which adopted the Red Crescent, instead. But neither cross nor crescent was acceptable to Israel, which wanted a Red Star of David. However, that was rejected by the Muslims as symbolising Zionism. Finally they all settled on the Red Crystal, a secular symbol that includes everyone".  Source: Concordat Watch.

Today we hear that Christians are targets when they enter countries where they are considered a minority.  Is that because we walk around with crosses on chest, bibles under our arms and erect large crosses on mountain tops?   Christian or ‘followers of the way’ would have little to fear if we practised what Jesus told us to do with compassion for all strangers.         Most if not all the worlds religions accept the Golden Rule ‘do unto others as you would them have  unto you’.  So I’ll end with this crazy thought what if all religions stopped wearing their religion on their sleeves and practised indiscriminate compassion might it result in less violence (after all how would you recognize the competition?)  and how would we know who to reject?  

But now I will come to the real point of this brief essay and again ask the question ‘is it necessary to wear our religion on our sleeve?’ Or more pointedly does Christianity depend on what we wear, what denomination we attend, what version of the Bible we read, or who is in and who is out in our community, what prayers we need to recite and ritual we must perform, what we must believe, and most importantly for some 'who will go to heaven or hell'? Do we really need to fear or distrust other religions, athiest or agnostics, and gays? Do we trust the institution, ourselves or God, to save us in the end? Or is there something far more wonderfully positive beyond our limited understanding of God and his unconditional love, from what we have been taught thus far?

Readers may be interested to read noted author and religious historian Karen Armstrong's latest book 'Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life', (2010).  What was especially significant for me was her chapter on "Compassion for Yourself'  highlighting the point that we really cannot love others until we learn to love ourself. 

Anti-Semitism and Christians

Bl. Edith Stein

In the late nineteen eighties while attending classes at the Catholic Blessed Edith Stein Institute an unnamed student was overheard making a  anti-Semitic remark about a picture on the classroom wall. It  displayed a figure standing around a large and obvious Jewish symbol of the Star of David.  “What is that awful picture of a Jew doing in these Catholic halls” he questioned. What our accuser did not realize, at the time, that it happened to be the image of one Edith Stein herself – one of the most famous Jewish converts to Catholicism in the twentieth century.

Anti-Semitic remarks such as these have had a long and lasting history in Catholic and later other Christian denominations.  Paul until   thrown from his horse on his way to Damascus from Jerusalem, (between 31-25 CE) with the intent of persecuting Hellenist ‘followers of the Way’ eventually became the persecutor of Jews himself.  Nor is the New Testament exempt from several anti-Semitic comments.  For example, the Gospel of John (8. 44-47) accuses Jews of being children of the devil and the like.  Such remarks according to Christian apologist, including Martin Luther CE 1483-1546) were justly warranted because many Jews refused to accept Jesus as the rightful Messiah.  Anti-Semitism in popular European Christian culture escalated beginning in the 13th century. Accusations of deiocide, Blood libels  and host desecration drew popular attention and led to many cases of persecution against Jews.  

The intent of this brief essay is not to enter into a long history of anti-Semitism but to question as to why or how anti-Semitism remained so virulently alive that ultimately more than five million Jewish men, women and children were ruthlessly persecuted, tortured and violently killed by citizens raised in  Europe’s finest Christian tradition or nations. How did the anti-Semitism atmosphere remain such a  powerful source of hatred in the minds of Christians for so long.  What elements of this hatred finally lead to the holocaust during WWII?  How was the involvement or lack thereof by the church responsible for such a dramatic conclusion by the end of the war?     

Wikipedia tell us that Brown University historian David Kertzer, working from the Vatican archive, has argued in his book The Popes Against the Jews that in the 19th century and early 20th century the Roman Catholic Church adhered to a distinction between "good anti-Semitism" and "bad anti-Semitism". The "bad" kind promoted hatred of Jews because of their descent. This was considered un-Christian because the Christian message was intended for all of humanity regardless of ethnicity; anyone could become a Christian. The "good" kind criticized alleged Jewish conspiracies  to control newspapers, banks, and other institutions, to care only about accumulation of wealth, etc. Many Catholic bishops wrote articles criticizing Jews on such grounds, and, when accused of promoting hatred of Jews, would remind people that they condemned the "bad" kind of anti-Semitism.  Kertzer's work is not without critics. Scholar of Jewish-Christian relations Rabbi David G, Dalin, for example, criticized Kertzer in the Weekly Standard for using evidence selectively.   Dalin’s book ‘The Myth of Hitler’s Pope’  is an attempt to protect Pius XII from accusations that he didn’t do enough to save Jews during WWII.  At the same time the books admits that a historically damaging form of anti-Semitism already existed among many Christian institutions. For that reason there is little point in defending Pius XII but rather to look at the culture that promoted anti-Semitism for the last two thousand years. David G. Dalin is an ordained rabbi and professor of History and Political Science at the highly traditional  Catholic Ave Maria University in Naples , Florida.  What a rabbi is doing teaching at a such an ultra conservative Catholic university remains unanswered.  

On March 16, 1998  Catholic officials finally responded to the long awaited question of what responsibility, if any, the Church bore for the slaughter of millions of European Jews during WWII.  In the document  “We Remember: A reflection on the Shoah” the Church admitted that while it had fostered negative “religious” views of the Jews it had not been responsible for any negative  images of their harmful social, economic, cultural, and political effects – the latter identified with modern anti-Semitism.   Author David I. Kertzer continues. . . . The anti-Semitism/anti-Judaism distinction soon became an article of faith that relieved the Church of any responsibility for what happened.  Before long, millions of people came to assume its historical reality.

A similar argument is used today by the Roman Catholic Church to explain  homosexuality. The Roman Catholic Catechism clearly states that “the acts of homosexuals are intrinsically disordered and are considered to be of grave depravity”.  At the same time the Catechism insists that . . . . "homosexuals must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity and that every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided” . . .  Is this form of 'double speak' not like having your best friend accuse you of being a sexual deviate who is going to make this fact public; but somehow still required to love you?  This begs the obvious question: which of these two remarks by your friend is likely to affect you  most?  How is the rest of the world now going to remember you?   Could some aspects of your accusers behaviour not be equally or more abhorrent to the rest of the world? Some Christians  referring to ‘homophobia’ stated that this was not a form of hatred but merely a positive means of identifying a person’s sin.  When we lose or deny our own sins and pin them on someone else we may have lost the true meaning of what it means to follow Christ.  

As for the eradication of anti-Semitism it is noted that since Vatican II Catholic-Jewish relations improved significantly.  However in 2007 Pope Benedict’s decree allowing for wider us of the Tridentine Mass once again includes a Good Friday prayer calling for the conversion of the Jewish people.  A further setback in these relations occurred in January 2009 when Pope Benedict lifted excommunication of four bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX).  The society was reported to have perpetuated the Jewish deicide and Jewish world domination plot canards in its official newsletters and on several of its websites internationally (although the offending websites have been removed since the controversy surrounding the bishops' reinstatement).  One of the bishops who was readmitted into the Catholic Church was Richard Williamson, a bishop who believes that there were no gas chambers used in any concentration camp. As such much anger has arisen from Jewish communities, The Jewish Agency for Israel, Yad Vashem, Elie Wiesel (Nobel prize laureate and holocaust survivor) and Germany’s Central Council of Jews have all condemned the decision to lift the excommunication and the chief Rabbinate of Israel decided to cut the ties with Vatican. The controversy also attracted attention from outside the Jewish community with German Chancellor Angela Merkel calling on Benedict to issue a "very clear" rejection of Holocaust denial. Surely God intended that we should all be ONE and not separate from each other.  

CHRISTIAN STATEMENT AGAINST ANTI-SEMITISM

The ad below was paid for by members of Canadian Friends of the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem

The Province, British Columbia, Friday, June 3, 1983

AS CHRISTIANS IN THIS COMMUNITY:

WE AFFIRM our faith in the Hebrew-Christian Scriptures and their command that we love God and our neighbour; that we pray for our leaders, our nation (I Timothy 2:1-3), and more particularly for our Jewish friends here and in Israel (Psalm 122:6), that they will be better understood, appreciated and defended.

WE APPRECIATE their presence in, and their contribution to this nation, and we are prepared to defend and protect their individual and collective rights especially against the forces of anti-Semitism (Genesis 12:3).

WE GIVE THANKS to God for the Jewish people who recorded and preserved the Word of God, and through whom God gave us the Bible and our Saviour.

WE APOLOGIZE for "Christian" anti-Semites, and for our country's anti-Semitic immigration policy before, during, and after World War II; and the double standards applied against Israel in international affairs.

WE APPEAL to all Canadians, especially those professing to be Christians, to join with us in combating and eliminating this expression of racial hatred.