October 26, 2008
For The SOMA Review
For five four months, I’ve been bicycling across the country, part of a yearlong tour of religious sites that are inspiring and uniquely American. Like in a garden, I expected to find some thorns in the spiritual roses. Instead, I’ve found weeds choking out some of the most deeply rooted faiths. And it’s not what people think.
For years, the religious community has bemoaned the decline of America’s most steadfast faiths. Mainstream Protestants and Jews have generally been waning in numbers, and even Roman Catholics wouldn’t be doing so well without immigration. Often, it’s attributed to the rise of individualism and buffet-style spirituality, where Americans want to pick and choose the tenets of their own faith. But I see something else—a disturbing tendency to badmouth any and all differing belief systems.
This ill-mannered unspiritual behavior, the religious equivalent of “country first” politics, seems to be coming from these same faiths that are having attendance problems. Wherever I go, I’m looking for expressions of the spirit, personal accounts of the divine in people’s lives. But over and over I find that too many of the faithful are less interested in talking about their own experiences than in haranguing others for encroaching on their turf.
Whether it’s a Hasidic rabbi in Woodstock, New York who rails against Tibetan Buddhists who are “trying to destroy the Jewish people,” a fundamentalist Christian tour guide in Zion, Illinois who refuses to even talk to anyone who doesn’t accept Jesus as a personal savior, or United Church of Christ members in Northampton, Massachusetts who complain incessantly about close-minded conservatives who can’t see the light, the need to co-opt God is apparently an inevitable, and insufferable, fly in the ointment of old-time religion.
I don’t see this tendency among the growing faiths. Mormons spend too much time testifying to be too critical. Buddhists like to say to that their practice can be combined with other faiths. And Muslims, so worried about being misinterpreted in today’s unfriendly political atmosphere, have internal scripts about the similarities between Islam and the other monotheistic faiths.
One some level, it makes sense. When faced with dwindling attendance, many congregations want to shore up the walls to minimize losses. But focusing on the faults of others hardly seems like a winning solution.
I’m probably the epitome of the religious wanderer. I grew up with no real faith of my own, never attending religious services and not knowing the Bible from the dictionary. Neither, however, could I relate to my family’s avid secular humanism. So, since I can remember, I’ve been exploring various interpretations of the divine.
On this trip, however, rather than finding faith, I repeatedly find myself sweating in a seat and checking my watch while my conversation partners foam at the mouth. Is this the community that spiritual seekers are hoping to find?
It’s easy to scapegoat in terms of faith, to think that congregations are dying because of preying missionaries and assaulting doctrines. But where does that leave you spiritually? In treating religion like a battlefield, petrified congregations become their own illusory enemies. And in combat, no army is without casualties.
History doesn’t remember belligerent faiths fondly, and tables can turn much more quickly in the modern age. Who wants to go to the church of the Crusades, when the devastation it wreaks can be seen in a short period of time? If we’re in a religious war, all the combatants may be losing.
The congregations that are compelling and attractive are the ones who let the core of their faiths shine, and wouldn’t dream of building walls to keep their light in.
Negative focuses are the dandelions in the spiritual garden, whose thorny leaves overgrow and strangle the true blossoms of religious faith. Entering into intellectual religious wars because of defensive fears is a battle destined to be lost. Other religions are never going to disappear, so while the religious warrior may be temporarily energized, it’s a false high, based on the false hope that a faith focused on negativity will inspire armies of new converts.
Faith-bashing distracts from the real purpose of religious institutions—to build and help the greater population. People want to go to places of worship that are caring, coherent, and dynamic in their relationship to God. We will never get to paradise as long as the crabgrass of religious intolerance has a stranglehold in the Garden of Eden.
Hey there Matt,
What a gem you wrote 2 years ago: The Poison Seeds.
Friend just advised me today and I got the link. And it’s a timeless message of great utility to folks of old-time faiths as well as new religionists like myself.
I warmly invite you to visit the Unification Church and give us a review. Even if critical it likely will do us a lot of good.
I paste below a press release I put out last week to let America’s religion editors know about the tragic persecution of Unification Church members in Japan. I found out recently that Japanese Christian churches are a very tiny percentage of the religious body of Japanese, and they aren’t growing. My colleagues in Japan tell me that some Christian congregations in Japan are comprised chiefly of former members of the Unification Church who were forcibly kidnapped, confined and deprogrammed. Yep, they find that going after our members is a cost-effective way to add to their own congregations.
It’s a weird and wacky world.
For Immediate Release:
Press Contact:
United States: Dan Fefferman: 301-789-1589; dfeff@aol.com
Unification Church in Japan: 03-3467-3181. Yoshio Mitoma; mitoma@uc-japan.org
Japanese Unificationists Believed to Be Resisting Confinement
Courtesy of www,Familyfed.org: http://www.familyfed.org/news/index.php?id=119&page=1&apage=1
It is believed that three Japanese Unification Church members who went missing several months ago are enduring psychological harassment after having been confined and held against their will because of their faith, according to Mr. Shunsuke Uotani, a Unification Church member and vice-secretary general of the Universal Peace Federation in Japan. These missing members are Momoyo Yamada (31, kidnapped Sept. 18, 2009), Fusako Tomoda (22, kidnapped Jan. 15, 2010), and Yoshiko Majima (31, kidnapped Feb. 7, 2010).
However, it is believed that professional faithbreakers were successful in persuading Yuko Majima (60, confined since October, 2009), Masako Kudo (35, confined for nearly 2 years), and Takashi Nishikawa (26, confined in August, 2009) to renounce their faith. These persons were reported to be under confinement on www.Familyfed.org on Feb. 2, 2010.
“We have determined that they are not under detention. They indicated that they renounced their faith — although we do not know whether their statements are true or disguised,” Mr. Uotani tells familyfed.org by email.
Some Unificationists held against their will have pretended to renounce their beliefs in order to escape confinement. Mr. Toru Goto, held by his family for more than 12 years, signed such renunciation letters. Mr. Goto is currently the president of the Japanese Victims’ Association Against Religious Kidnapping and Forced Conversion and has spoken out frequently during the last year against the scandal of selective enforcement of the law protecting Japanese citizens from kidnapping. He revealed in 2008 that his family had starved him almost to death during the last year of confinement in an effort to break his will.
Mr. Goto and other victims gave their testimonies to representatives of human-rights organizations meeting at the recently-concluded 13th Session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, according to Rev. Peter Zoehrer, an official of the Vienna-based Forum for Religious Freedom. Several victims also have been interviewed by U.S. government officials in Japan.
Since 1969 more than 4,300 members of the Unification Church have been kidnapped and confined by misguided relatives and opponents of the church, according to Mr. Dan Fefferman, President of the International Coalition for Religious Freedom. Some of the victims have been beaten, sexually assaulted or tortured while in captivity.
Mr. Goto’s public awareness campaign has motivated his opponents to publish their counter-attack in the April issue of Monthly Times, a Japanese news magazine. In the article, Mr. Yoshifu Arita, an independent journalist, reports his roundtable discussion with three veteran critics of the Unification Church: Prof. Sadao Asami, a professor of religion who also describes himself as a cult expert, Mr. Hiroshi Yamaguchi, a lawyer and Mr. Takashi Miyamura, professional anti-cult activist who attempted to break Mr. Toru Goto. Monthly Times did not contact Mr. Goto or any other Unification Church member for comment. All participants in the discussion deny that kidnapping and confinement of Unificationists takes place as charged by Mr. Goto. Prof. Asami speculates in the article that Mr. Goto falsely claims that he was starved while in confinement, suggesting that Mr. Goto starved himself.
The journal has been denounced by Japanese-speaking residents of the United States who have endured kidnapping and psychological torture at the hands of professional faithbreakers in Japan. Mr. Hiroshi Jimbo, a Japanese member of the Unification Church residing in New Jersey tells familyfed.org that the article is unbalanced and misleading. Mr. Jimbo heads an organization of U.S. residents who survived coercive conversion in Japan and who are demanding that the U.S. government investigate the kidnapping scandal in Japan.
“As the representative of U.S. Victim Association, when I read the article, I was amazed at the attitude of those featured in the Times,” Mr. Jimbo tells Familyfed.org. “They asserted their innocence that there was no evidence of confinement, but it is a fact that I and many of my fellow Unificationists have experienced the physical confinement where the only exit is to give up the faith and surrender,” he added.Mr. Jimbo continued: “Inside the closed room, abuse and assault are taking place, even there are cases of harassment or rape., Some of victims suffer Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Some ended up committing suicide. The promoters of this coercion need to hide such matters, which is why they made this article,” he commented.
— doug burton · Apr 19, 10:50 PM · #
Greetings, Matt.
I only wish that people who wear the “mask of religion” could understand the basic point you are making. I can’t imagine Jesus looking down on the various denominations and feeling happy when he sees them fighting each other. And I can’t imagine God looking down seeing the various religions fighting each other and being happy about it. It must be Jesus’ greatest headache and Gods, too.
And all the while the political realm is thinking, “Good job religious people, keep on fighting each other, it makes our job so much easier.”
Mike in California
— Mike · Apr 20, 02:07 AM · #