Bill Maher's Fundamentalism

This post appeared in last week’s Huffington Post, receiving over 200 “likes” and over 200 comments.

I am a Bill Maher fan. My partner and I regularly watch the political comedian’s show on HBO, and we share his political leanings. Though he doesn’t quite “get” the need for or role of myth, he fulfills the traditional and mythological role of “fool to the king,” using barbed wit to speak truth to power. And he expresses the anger and frustration many of us progressives feel toward “the powers that be.”

Saturday night before last we attended his live performance here in Atlanta. The friends I accompanied wondered how his religious barbs might affect me. All I could say was that I agreed with most of them, mainly because he was not directing them at the religion I practice.

For example, I agree that religion and science are mutually exclusive categories, but it’s not an either/or choice, for each serve different purposes. Some of the most respected theologians and contemplatives have been scientists, doctors, and mathematicians themselves. Personally, my faith would not be as vital and progressive were it not for scientific discoveries and revelations.

Though Bill Maher thinks he is dissing all religion and spirituality, he actually attacks what I would call grade school religion. He even hinted at some respect for the new pope, whom I would describe as representing graduate school religion and above.

His reference to “the Jewish fairy tales” of Hebrew scriptures sounded unintentionally ironic to me, given that the Jewish prophets played the same role of playing “fool to the king,” speaking truth to power, and could be said to be the moral and spiritual basis for Maher’s own criticism, both of political leaders who fail the poor and marginalized, and religious leaders who place priority on worship and purity over justice and mercy, as well as his desire to set a fire under the electorate to do something about it. Another Jewish prophet, Jesus, did much the same.

Rather than give credit to Mother Teresa’s ability to doubt her faith, referencing her posthumously published letters, Maher used it as “proof” that religion is a crock of ----.

Psychiatrist and spiritual explorer M. Scott Peck once defined evil as “the unquestioned self,” the inability of an individual or institution to even imagine being wrong. Thus I believe that in faith, doubt is a virtue. Just as in science.

Maher’s certainties about religion mirror the certainties of fundamentalists, rather than the whole of faith. I believe he would appreciate Bishop Jack Spong’s quip, perhaps quoting someone, “Religion is like a public pool. Most of the noise comes from the shallow end.”

Each Wednesday of Lent, I am providing links for the following six days, should you wish to use this blog as a Lenten resource for reflection.

Thursday:     The Benefit of Doubt

Friday:           A New Underground Railroad

Saturday:      "One Nation Under God"

Sunday:         The Making of You

Monday:        Dust and Glory

Tuesday:       Piety on Parade  

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Copyright © 2014 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Newtown to Newcountry? "We Must Change."

Working from home a week ago, Wade mentioned he had received a CNN news flash on his phone that there had been another mass shooting. Busy finishing up the duties of my online course on sexuality and Christianity, I acknowledged this latest shooting with an “uh-huh” and continued working.

Only toward the end of the day did I learn the victims were children and the site an elementary school. I lost it. Tears immediately came to my eyes. First graders, six- and seven-year-olds, are particularly precious innocents to me. “Thy childish essence was from God,” Charles Dickens wrote of another such child. I lost it again when it was reported that wails could be heard coming from inside the fire station when their parents learned their fate. And the educators—principal, teachers, teacher’s aide—who  lost their lives, trying to protect “their kids”: OMG, OMG, OMG.

Moments of silence are being observed the day I write this, one week later, in memory of those so brutalized. Silence is good; it reminds us that there is nothing to be said adequate to this occasion. It gives us a chance to catch our breath and remember theirs. It gives a chance to reflect. But I’ve needed more than a moment. I’ve needed a week, which is why this wasn’t last week’s post. And even now it seems presumptuous, even dangerous to venture thoughts on the incomprehensible tragedy. I felt sorry for all those pastors and rabbis and imams who had to preach that weekend.

In his public reflections, President Barack Obama said of us Americans, “We must change.” Having both worked and volunteered in congregations, on campuses, and in community organizations, I have learned that those are the three most challenging and most resisted words. “We must change.”

Psychologist M. Scott Peck defined evil as “the unquestioned self,” which he saw at work both in institutions and individuals, an inability even to imagine one’s self or one’s group being wrong. I have used it to describe the church’s resistance to gay people. Whereas gay people, like all outsiders, usually grew up questioning ourselves, the church resisted questioning its prejudice and exclusion.

“We must change” is predicated on questioning ourselves and our institutions and overcoming our inertia, something we are reluctant to do. For Christians, this means also considering how Jesus would view us.

On departure from the presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned of the “military-industrial complex,” which he had earlier warned would take food from the hungry. But his original draft warned of the “military-industrial-congressional complex.” He was persuaded to take “congressional” out, but how needful the warning is today, as we witness congressional impasse and collusion with weapons manufacturers, other major corporations, and the National Rifle Association. (See the New York Times editorial explaining that the NRA actually represents gun manufacturers, not gun owners. Btw, in my view, the NRA’s proposal of a guard in every school is the solution of a third-grader [apologies to third-graders] that would only add to the body count and further burden insufficiently-funded schools.)

When the Virginia Tech mass shooting occurred years ago, I led a prayer for that campus during a regularly scheduled prayer service of a church I was serving in another part of the country. I was stunned to have another progressive Christian offer what amounted to a “rebuttal” prayer, deriding our horror at that violence when things like that happened all the time in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course we frequently prayed for Iraq and Afghanistan in that service. But that night, I felt particularly close to those on the Virginia Tech campus because I had spoken there, made friends there, one of whom I called to see how everyone was coping and if any I knew were among the casualties.

Similarly, I felt close to those on the campus of Sandy Hook Elementary School because my mother spent her entire professional life teaching first-graders, and I remember every day after school seeing how those innocents hung affectionately on my mother, even when they had moved to upper grades, because they loved her so and she loved them so. I could see her also putting her body between the shooter and those innocents.

At the same time, I am mindful of the ten Afghanistan schoolgirls, all under 12 years of age, killed in the blast of a Soviet-era landmine as they collected firewood for their homes on the Monday following the Newtown shootings.

“We must change.” That means me, and you, this nation and the world.

Copyright © 2012 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Suggested uses: personal reflection, contemporary readings in worship, conversation starters in classes.  This ministry is entirely funded by your donations. Please click hereto make a tax-deductible contribution. Thank you!