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The Myth of Religious Violence John 1 “This My Son, the Beloved, With The Myth of Religious Violence John 1 “This my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” That’s how the gospel reading ended last Sunday. This week we take a side trip to the Gospel of John: “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” This is Christianity 101 – it doesn’t get any more basic than this. The Lamb of God. This sounds so simple, but there’s really not much that is simple about Christian faith. It is challenging and intellectually demanding and we ought not pretend otherwise. Look, here is the Lamb of God! This makes no sense in our world. This is a direct challenge to our American idea of power. Jesus – the peace of God; the world violent and frightened. There’s so much violence in our midst that we show signs of post- traumatic stress endured by soldiers returning from war. Lives obsessed with violence and fear – on the edges of our minds all the time. Instead of helping people overcome the fear of violence, we have created a different kind of Jesus for America. And you know that the American Jesus is not a Lamb! The American Jesus is obsessed with secular political power and military might. The American Jesus packs an assault rifle and has an American flag tattoo on his shoulder. The American Jesus is all hot under the collar about our rights, our safety, our security, our money, our country. The American Jesus throws his weight around and has no room for compromise, hates diversity, and wants to make sure that nobody gets a free ride. All the Jesus figures in American movies are powerful and they get revenge. Lambs are not capable of exacting revenge. Truth be told plenty of American Christians would love for Jesus to fly onto the football field and do the Superman gesture. Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence have a book called Captain America and the Crusade Against Evil: The Dilemma of Zealous Nationalism and Jewett has a wonderful book called Jesus Against the Rapture that warn against the perils of an American Jesus. But I will say it again: JESUS IS THE LAMB OF GOD! He’s the one hanging on a cross, his hands and feet trapped by the nails. One of the earliest pictures of the crucifixion is a Byzantine wall painting. There’s a stone hill and the wood-stick cross, but instead of Jesus, there’s a huge nailed lamb on the crossbar: Lamb of God![i] That’s our Savior. Whether we are prepared to admit this or not, Jesus is the Lamb of God! This commits us to non- violence. Much of what I’m about to say is dependent upon William Cavanaugh’s book, The Myth of Religious Violence. The myth of religious violence is the idea that religion is a generic feature of human life that is distinct from “secular” features such as politics and economics, and that religion has a dangerous inclination to promote violence. The secular nation is the natural, rational, and necessary instrument for the use of violence and the keeping of the peace. Religion promotes violence; the secular nation promotes peace.[ii] I am arguing that the myth is false. Religion is certainly not exempt from violence; there is blood on our portfolio, and there are no bullies like religious bullies, but that is not the same as believing that religion is the cause of all violence.[iii] What is the myth of religious violence? It is a rhetorical construct, born in the Reformation, when Catholics and Protestants were killing one another. The argument goes like this: In order to keep the fanatical Catholics and Protestants from killing each other, the creation of the nation- state became the necessary institution of peace. In other words, the secular nation is the peace maker and religious people are violent ones. Yet the evidence shows that the Reformation wasn’t just the Catholics vs. the Protestants. The nation states were part of this violence and there was plenty of Catholic on Catholic killing and Protestants vs. Protestants violence.[iv] We are all complicit in violence, involved in violence, because we are a people of violence and we dwell in the midst of violent people. All it takes for violence to thrive is for good people to do nothing. The damage done by this mythology has been devastating. It gets us off the hook and we don’t have to feel responsible for the violence done in the name of our institutions. “The myth of religious violence helps to construct and marginalize a religious Other. For example, we use the myth to cast Muslims as religious fanatics. Whenever our nation goes to war, you can count on the preachers to throw the gospel to the dogs and promote the myth of religious violence.[v] The more unjust a war, the more the state can count on some preachers to gush forth vitriol and hatred and demonize the enemy. One pastor tried to have his cake and eat it too: Islam "is a very destructive type of faith....They're a revengeful people....We as Christians don't despise the Muslims. We love them. We just don't like what they stand for." Here’s Christopher Hitchens, the brilliant atheist, sounding like a preacher: “We can’t live on the same planet with Islamic radicals, and I’m glad because I don’t want to. I don’t want to breathe the same air as these psychopaths and murders and rapists and torturers and child abusers. It’s them or me. I’m happy about this because I know it will be them. It’s a duty and responsibility to defeat them. But it’s also a pleasure. I don’t regard it as a grim task at all.” Muslims are painted as fanatical, irrational, and illogical. Their violence is evil. We are saying, “Our violence is righteous, sanctified violence, approved by God. Our wars are holy wars against infidels and unbelievers and heretics.” Our culture is so convinced that religion is fanatical and the secular is intelligent and rational, that Christians are afraid of any action that might get us labeled as fanatics. I am sympathetic with your desire to be rational, well-mannered, to do all things decently and in order, to not get embarrassed, but the result has been to take the vitality out of our faith. We have become the go-along, get along, tag-along, make no noise, stay out of trouble, take no side, wear the invisibility cloak of Harry Potter disciples of Jesus. The secularists who hate religion and deny the existence of God are among the loudest proponents of the myth of religious violence. Christopher Hitchens, admired in many Christian circles, had some very approving things to say about killing people: And I say to the Christians while I’m at it, “Go love your own enemies; by the way, don’t be loving mine.” I think the enemies of civilization should be beaten and killed and defeated, and I don’t make any apology for it. And I think it’s sickly and stupid and suicidal to say that we should love those who hate us and try to kill us and our children and burn our libraries and destroy our society. I have no patience this nonsense. And the most telling of his secular arguments: “The true believer cannot rest until the whole world bows the knee.” For Hitchens, the atheist, and many Christians the game is zero-sum. The world is not big enough for dissenters; diversity is dangerous. Ultimately all those who are not true believers have to be exterminated. Are you a true believer in the myth that American violence is righteous? Let me ask you what could have possibly incited otherwise law-abiding white Christian Americans, in 1940, to treat a group of fellow white Christians in the following ways: In Nebraska, one member of this group was castrated. In Wyoming, another member was tarred and feathered. In Maine, six members were beaten. In Illinois, a caravan of group members was attacked. In other states, the sheriffs looked the other way as people assaulted group members. Members of the group were commonly arrested and then imprisoned without being charged. The group treated with such violence: The Jehovah’s Witnesses. That’s right the pamphlet-pushing, harmless Saturday morning invaders of suburban peace and quiet knocking on our doors to try and convert us, were greeted by their fellow Americans with violence. Their offense: They passed out pamphlets such as the one entitled “Reasons Why a True Follower of Jesus Christ Cannot Salute a Flag.” Here we have an allegedly Christian nation on the brink of war enforcing reverence to its flag and violently persecuting a nonviolent group of people who believe that flag worship is idolatrous. Yet it is not the violence of zealous nationalism that gets the criticism, but the poor Jehovah’s Witnesses for their irrational religious views. What I am attempting to do is get you to question why we consider secular allegiances as natural, rational, and unquestionable but consider the Jehovah’s Witnesses religious loyalty to Jesus Christ as something irrational, fanatical, and violence-producing. As Christians we have Jesus the Lamb of God. To follow him is to categorically reject the myth of religious violence. To follow him is to forsake the American Jesus. In opposition to his enemies, in spite of the reluctance of his allies, Martin Luther King, Jr.
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