Wrestling with Religion

Religion in the old South Growing up in an Alabama Protestant town and a Baptist family in the 20th century, I had a clear idea what religion was, but a limited one. Most local religion was austere or invisible in the frontier tradition, all about words and the "truths" they signified, scarcely existing outside of songs, prayers, sermons, books, and pamphlets. A "mixed" religious family was one where a husband and wife disagreed about which church to go to Sunday morning. There was a Catholic church--small but thriving in 1950 as university influence made Auburn vaguely cosmopolitan--but I've heard that the church was founded by mistake. Around 1910, when no establishment of religion meant promoting all Christian denominations equally, students were required to sign a log at the church of their choice every Sunday morning. Since there was no Catholic church in Auburn, if they registered as Catholic, they could sleep in, and the story is that thes...

March 17, 2020. Last week began almost normally with COVID-19 infections few and far away, single cases making news. "Best wash your hands and not shake hands, but no fear." Then, day by day over the week, the drumbeat crescendoed  to what feels like hysteria but makes precautionary sense, like wearing a seat belt even if you've driven for years without a crash. Here in Fredericksburg, Virginia, it's all precautionary. Because the virus incubates for days and spreads from people without symptoms, next week's precautions have to be made yesterday. And because nobody's immune, it spreads explosively under normal conditions, doubling every week until it infects most of the population. The mortality rate is modest, maybe one percent (we don't know because mild cases go unreported), but that's much more lethal than flu.  As I write, there's only one case in Spotsylvania County--one out of 134,000 people and that one quarantined--so...

"Do not be afraid, for I am with you" (Isaiah 41:10) is a sentiment repeated all through scripture, Abrahamic and otherwise. Religion generally counteracts fear--our instinctive physical reaction to impending danger, loss, or insult. Fear is a surge of adrenaline that causes sweating, dilation of the eyes, a fast heartbeat, a surge of blood to muscles, imprinted memories, and an impulse to freeze, flee, or fight.           For the millions of years our progenitors wandered in small bands exposed to carnivores, starvation, and strangers, terror helped them survive, but today, when wild beasts are rare, food warehoused, and most strangers harmless, fear can be useless and corrosive. Chronic anxiety afflicts us in social situations where we can't freeze, run, or fight--not productively anyway. Fear erupts as road rage, PTSD, agoraphobia, blanking on exams, and other dysfunctions, and chronic stress degrades sleep, health, and pleasure. Fear ...

I’m lingering after a meeting and ask the woman next to me: “Do you know that man who asked that last question?” “The one that sat in the back row?” “That’s him.” We look around. We don’t see him. “Somebody called him Joe,” I volunteer. “He was introduced to me as Sarge. He heads the finance committee." “ You must be talking about Mr. Edwards,” says a man who has been listening. Or maybe I inquire about the Way, the Truth, and the Light. “You mean the Godhead incarnate?” “That’s him.” We look around. We don’t see him. “Somebody called him Krishna,” I volunteer. “He was introduced to me as Jesus. He died to give eternal life.” “You must be talking about Orpheus,” says a man who has been listening.

Cultural relativism of language is a historically new idea. Rabbinic Judaism taught that Hebrew was the language of Adam, God, the Angels, and all humanity before the Tower of Babel—a view accepted by Christian scholars through the Renaissance, though Adam’s naming the animals suggests that the divine tongue was incomplete. In the Book of Genesis, words are God’s tools of creation, and his coeternal Word (allegorically, at least, a unit of speech) is a person of the Christian Trinity. Language is in God's innermost nature. Ptah, the Egyptian craftsman god, also created the world using language. He spoke words and the world came into being. Sacred words—sound patterns perceived as instruments of power rather than just as tokens for ideas—are deeply imbedded in religion. YHWH really is God’s name in orthodox Judaism, not a noun like the other words he is called by. Vedic tradition considers Sanskrit the language of the gods, and an Arabic Quran is believed to co-exist with God i...