"We are particularly offended by the suggestion that the opposite of the religious right is the voice of atheism," said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism. "We are appalled when 'people of faith' is used in such a way that it excludes us, as well as most Jews, Catholics and Muslims. What could be more bigoted than to claim that you have a monopoly on God and that anyone who disagrees with you is not a person of faith?"
For years I've seen most of my peers, and much of the progressive community in general, eschew and even disdain not only organized religion but also anything we can learn from religious institutions -- almost entirely as a backlash against the bigotry and intolerance of the religious right.
This article in Salon reports that
[m]uch of Yoffie's sermon argued that for many Jews, liberalism is the result of religious values, not their antithesis. Being a liberal believer, he said, "means believing that religion involves concern for the poor and the needy, and giving a fair shake to all. When people talk about God and yet ignore justice, it just feels downright wrong to us. When they cloak themselves in religion and forget mercy, it strikes us as blasphemy."
We've already seen, over and over, that the right's attempt to turn America into an evangelical Christian nation leaves no room for dissent or disagreement by anyone from Harriet Meyers to SpongeBob SquarePants. Jews (and Catholics and Quakers and Deists and Mormons and many others) came to this continent in search of a place where they could practice their religion peaceably, and in many cases created communities built on tolerance. That tolerance is fading,
history replaced by rhetoric, good works in the name of God and/or Humanity replaced by
crass propoganda in the name of "energizing the base."
And as a backlash against all of this, both my generation and the hippies who came before us have moved from being non-religious to being anti-religious. Some find solace in New Age ideas, such as the almost entirely made up (but still interesting and valuable) Pagan resurgence. Some turn to Buddhism, with its (in America, at least) lack of oppressive dogma. But a great many, it seems, have developed an irrational disdain for anything that smacks of organized religion, or of a higher power -- no matter how generic that power may be.
In doing so, we as a movement are actually giving the right more ammunition to use against us. When they say that
progressives are all Jesus-hating atheists, they aren't far off.
"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." --
Neils Bohr
I don't have an answer, here, and I'm certainly not suggesting that everyone should suddenly find God for the good of the world (that'd be ironic, wouldn't it?)...just some musings.
