Social change artists need religion.
Artists? The headline said the left.
Well who knows what that means anymore. I mean everyone pursuing the arts of social change.
Like anti-globalisers?
Of course, and their friends or enemies the civilisers of globalisation.
Read also, In his God he trusts Todd Gitlin on George W. Bushs politicisation of religion
And everyone who is poor, oppressed, shat upon and spat upon, and who is trying to create a more just and compassionate world.
They need religion? A lot of the poor have religion it would help if they had less of it.
Often true. But it depends what kind of religion. You could use some yourself probably.
I dont believe in God!
Who said anything about God? I said religion. Why should non-believers be denied the benefits of religion?
Why not spirituality? Religion means hierarchies using God-talk to control the masses.
To me religion implies ongoing organisation. Spirituality is only part of it. Many people are working to rescue and develop the good parts of religion and dispense with the bad.
So why would the left sorry, social change artists need religion?
Because we need a way to build hope, faith, love, that is independent of our politics. We need daily, weekly ways to celebrate and build on the values that underlie our politics.
And the more we see our need for that, and develop it, the more we will bridge the gulf between the left and multitudes of ordinary people.
OK, heres the speech.
If you are a middle class European, you may have got into left politics out of compassion: as a teenager you raised money for starving people far away. If you are seriously poor, you may have struggled for years, watched your parents and children die of the struggle, just to keep your family from starving. At some point your political education began, as you learned that people were not starving just because of acts of God, weather and history.
It was because they couldnt make a living selling their cotton / wheat / corn: because the price was undercut by northern, subsidised crops. Or it was some other reason related to the way power is used in this world to preserve the status quo, increase the wealth of the rich, prevent the poor from rising up and claiming their share.
You learned to look behind the sweet words of politicians, priests and academic apologists to how they were making their bucks from the system.
Now you see the world through spectacles that reveal everywhere the influence of power and money.
This gives a dark vision indeed. So much of lifes brilliance is dimmed.
At its worst, the left feeds off hatred, bitterness, envy. These are all understandable emotions given the cruelties of social life. They are the fuel of necessary revolutions. Conservative Americans who doubt this only need to think of their own American Revolution these emotions were not missing.
But these are the emotions of taking. Even claiming our ancient rights (a noble motivation of many an essential political struggle) is a matter of taking what is owed. A society has to be built out of giving and receiving, more than taking.
When you are wearing the dark glasses that primarily reveal power relations and material interests, its easy to slip from a principled stance of claiming ones universal rights to fighting for power for ones own group. Its inevitable and has happened innumerable times. The trade union movement has its principled and unprincipled sides. Think of all the principled anti-colonialists who came to power and created an oligarchy to rule.
What holds you back, when in the grip of that dark vision of power, from just seeing a dog-eat-dog world? What makes you different from your oppressor?
We have to go back to the source, which is respect for all people equally, compassion for all people, love of family and friends. These are high ideals, but we have to learn to live them in small ways, constantly reminding ourselves what they mean in daily life. We need to hear them spoken, sung, told in stories, told to children in simple and deep terms, and discussed among adults in complex and deep terms. We need rituals or practices that express these ideals, as reminders. We need to undertake actions that embody them practically, regularly, by helping our neighbours, the old and the sick, or those in prison, oppressed or hurting.
We need a practice that puts love, hope, faith, respect at the centre. Campaigns to redress the worlds wrongs have to be secondary to this centre. If you think I mean that that will diminish such campaigns, think again. It means instead that vast new reserves of energy will be found for them.
This longing for a positive expression of our humanity is why many left events become carnivals, festivals; why we write utopian novels, sing hopeful as well as protest songs. But there is much more that can be created to provide inspiration and comfort in an ongoing, organised way. Religion has been doing it forever. And religion does not have to wound the intellectual or political sensibilities of todays social change artists. Our first job may be to recreate religion.
Some believe God/Goddess is the source of love and respect. Others think there is no deity, but it is in the nature of the universe to reward cooperation statistically if not individually. Others may think the cosmos random and cruel, but still believe that we humans can act well.
Any or all of these, separately or together, can form the basis of a religious community.
I am talking about a community where we gather regularly to be in the presence of our highest ideals; to share sorrows and pain; to accept each other as we are; and to remind ourselves again of what we are here to do and be. I think of it as a time out of time, the time I spend with my community on Sunday mornings.
So tell us about this community.
Of course. But that will have to be another time
