A more honest understanding of religion then is something involving tradition, community, and commitment. It expects more out of us and a commitment to be with one another. It is connection, not only to GOD and other people, but to the many people who came before. 

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Religion and belief aren’t the same thing.

Many of us have beliefs that are a little outside the mainstream of our religious traditions. Or we recognize the room within our tradition to develop our belief.

One of the practices I am most jealous of our Jewish brothers and sisters for is an ancient practice of midrash. While we have a closed canon for our scripture, Judaism has continued to expand the sacred texts through exploration and gifts to the community of faith in continued writing and dreaming and asking “what if…”

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Religion and belief aren’t the same. What separates the two is this:

Belief is individual. Religion is communal.

Belief you can do on your own. It is the fancy of one’s mind. It is the masterwork of an individual’s experience and imagination.

Religion is relational. It involves relationships with a deity, with one another, with tradition, with scripture. It is a dance with partners alive and dead and reborn. It is a certainty that comes with commitment and the hope that comes with taking a leap.

In Community

Many of us are struggling to feel that now. We’re confused and torn by the events of the world and the fear of the future.

Many of our communities are feeling it too. Some of our people have left our religious traditions because our churches and synagogues and mosques have not been places of connection and hope, but places of stifling and abuse.

People who leave these communities often don’t leave the faith. But if we don’t practice faith with at least one other person, then it is hard to call ourselves religious. We have belief, but without partnership, intention, and relationship, part of the core of what makes one religious is missing. We require both of the necessary components: that we might be, as Roger Wolsey suggests, spiritual *and* religious.

Naturally many people  are building religious practice into their relationships outside of church and outside their institutions. And many are building healthier religious practices outside of their Sunday mornings, so they can experience true, vibrant community while also gathering for more traditional celebrations each week with a formal religious community.

What is consistent in religion, then, is that pursuit of connection. As people. As a group. As a community.

Religion

A more honest understanding of religion then is something involving tradition, community, and commitment. It expects more out of us and a commitment to be with one another. It is connection, not only to GOD and other people, but to the many people who came before. It is about learning the practices of the faithful and participating in a bigger thing than Thursday night television or Sunday Night Football.

Religion is about personal faith and a community. It is about belief and tradition. It is about a shared present and sharing an adopted history.

One’s religion is bigger than whether or not we think we’re going to heaven when we die. That’s a small, selfish view of religion.

Religion is about family and community. It is about building a world more attuned to the dream God has for us and attuning ourselves to that world, that dream.

In this way, ISIS is very much religious. They are trying to build that perfect society. But they also happen to be much like a doomsday cult believing God’s dream is stuck in amber, preserved perfectly in their interpretation of its 7th Century vision. They are Islamic, but they don’t represent Islam.

It is also why Kim Davis alone isn’t. Sure, she is born-again and she sincerely believes her eternal safety is dependent on not letting LGBT persons marry. But this action is hers alone: a private crusade. It is personal, individualistic. It is belief. Now, the church behind Kim Davis and the support networks funding her counsel, that’s a whole other story. That {unfortunately} is religion.

This may seem like semantics. It probably is. It is also my attempt at a course correction. Because the popular way we talk about Islam is uncharitable and unwise. We like to talk about the whole religion. We talk about the parts we cherry pick from the Koran and we lump Muslims into a single group.

But then, right now in the United States, when we talk about Christians, we talk about a woman refusing to fulfil her legal obligation to provide marriage licenses on behalf of the state or a baker who refuses to bake a cake. And we call that religion. And the state keeps calling that religion, even this week. We are speaking of individuals in their individual conscience, doing something based on a personal belief without regard to what the majority of Christians believe, what our denominations say, and what our traditions teach. This seems fundamentally different.

You Just Know

The other day I heard Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me” in Starbucks and every single time I hear that song, I sing

Stay… with me

No I…won’t back down.

Because the tune of the opening line of the chorus is identical to Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.” I don’t mean, sounds a lot like, I mean, identical. In a lawsuit, the court sided with Petty, breaking its previous precedent of plagiarism as defined as 6 identical notes in a row. Here there were only 3 notes.

As a matter of law, I think this is terrible precedent. It makes original songwriting that much harder and the legal headaches unfathomable.

And yet, when you listen to the song, you can’t help but think he stole a whole line, not just a few notes. He stole an iconic sound. They are not only identical, but the way they sound; it is paced the same, the croon is the same. It just is the same.

This decision is a lousy standard from a legal perspective, but from a personal one, it just works. Perhaps we really do need to take the porn standard. How can you tell the difference between art and pornography? You know it when you see it.

Many private companies don’t use that standard, however. This is why Facebook and Instagram’s ban on nudity has been so controversial; they’ve treated breastfeeding pictures and breast cancer awareness pictures as if they are pornography, which just doesn’t sit right. You see it and you know that it isn’t porn.

It makes sense, doesn’t it? There is some nudity, yes, but it isn’t sexual. We can see why the letter of the law makes sense and also why it doesn’t work. They are different. You can sense it.

And with “Stay With Me” you can totally recognize that these two songs are just too similar for comfort.

You might not be satisfied with this distinction. I know plenty of people who love to camp out at the peak of the slippery slope, letting anyone know when they get too close to it. But it works for the most part regardless.

How can we talk about religion?

The question then is how can we talk about religion? And it seems like we have too many distinct definitions. We use it to condemn broadly and reinforce narrowly. We make it be about set rules and systems of belief where none such systems exist. And then we make the inverse assumption that all personally developed (but “sincere”) belief systems are religious.

I am not comfortable with setting new rules or new definitions for religion. But we ought to feel like we know it when we see it.

We ought to be confident in speaking to those necessary elements: a tradition, a community, and common texts. And those givens about religions:  that there are different traditions, organizational structures, belief systems, and goals within a religion. Often knowing and saying those things  out loud allows us to really get somewhere.

But most of all (and this a bit monotheistic of me to say) when we talk about a religion, my smell test (or melody test?) is simple: does this or do these people reveal GOD as GOD promises to be revealed? I know: kind of wacky for a Christian.

Perhaps the bigger question than whether or not ISIS is Islamic or Kim Davis is Christian is this: are we?

 

Brian McLaren – On Dialogue with a Muslim Woman

 

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