Imagine no religion. It’s easy if you try. No hell below us. Above us only sky.
              - John Lennon

         Imagine no religion. Maybe there would still be terrorists, but without a “holy war” to wage, perhaps some of the edge would be taken off their violence.
         When I was seven years old, I would lie awake at night and worry about whether I was going to hell to burn for all eternity. Some sophisticated theologians define hell as “separation from God,” but that’s not how most people understand it, and no child of seven should dwell on such fantasies of terror. Today, I have some Christian fundamentalist relatives whose doctrine requires them to believe that I--a loved family member and basically a good person--am destined for the unspeakable agony of a never-ending bath in the Lake of Fire. One of these relatives has pleaded with me to adopt his religion. I think it’s a wicked and inhumane doctrine that tells him I’m headed for eternal damnation.
         Another relative sent me a September 12 article from the “Friends of the Galilee Experience.” This article states that Allah and the spirit of Islam are none other than Satan himself. Some Christian fundamentalists seem as anxious for a “Holy War” as any jihad-bent Muslim extremist.
         Perhaps the problem is not with religion per se, but rather with those religions or sects whose faithful claim to have all the answers and a truth so important that they think they must impose this truth on others. Jesus himself--who is recognized by Islam as a prophet--preached humility, a lesson that is often lost in religious pronouncements today.
         Despite John Lennon’s “thought experiment,” religion isn’t going away. I’m reading about Islam in a concise book called The World’s Religions, by Huston Smith. My own near-complete ignorance about Islam--the religion of over a billion people--is a shocking testimony to the isolationist curriculum of American education. And another educational gap is important to mention: China is home to a fifth of the world’s people, but though I had years of U.S. history in school, I know virtually nothing about Chinese history. It’s time for us to join the world!
         Theologian Paul Tillich defined “faith” as being the object of one’s “ultimate concern.” Under this definition, the most prevalent faith in the United States today is not Christianity, but rather the belief in material wealth. Although it’s not a religion in the usual sense, Materialism functions like a religion in that it determines the activities and goals and purposes of our lives. Money, possessions, and material security are the predominant “ultimate concerns” of Americans. And the current lifeblood of this faith is oil.
         I was puzzled by a recent “letter to the editor” stating that “at least this time no one is saying it’s about oil.” I’m not so sure.
         Much of the world’s oil is in the Middle East. A 1945 U.S. State Department report describes Saudi Arabia as “...a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.” For the U.S., it has been crucial to ensure not just the flow of this oil into western hands, but also the flow of profits from this oil.
         Has this oil imperative led us to support unpopular, undemocratic, and sometimes viciously brutal governments in the Middle East? Has the need for oil played any role in the stupendous amounts of weaponry that we have bestowed upon Israel over the years? Does the mighty Israeli military--aligned with U.S. interests--go beyond protecting Israel’s security by serving also to ensure the ongoing flow of black gold and petrodollars?
         I’ve seen a few recent articles encouraging Americans to go out and buy something--a sort of patriotic act of consumption to stimulate the economy, but a far cry from the frugality of the depression-reared “Great Generation” that fought World War II. Work and livelihood are deep human needs, but I hope we can learn to base economic health on something other than an ever-increasing consumption of the earth. There’s plenty of work that needs doing, such as environmental clean-up and restoration, sustainable agriculture, efficient transportation, and work to improve global understanding and international relations. “Jobs” won’t be a problem when someone with money is willing to pay for the work that we really need done. If our government can instantly come up with $15 billion to bail out airline corporations, then we should be able to afford some significant moves in healthy directions.
         We must begin to kick our addiction to oil. Our need for a daily fix of millions of barrels drives us to interfere in the internal affairs of Middle Eastern nations. This in turn has aroused widespread animosity toward the U.S. in the region, and has thereby helped breed the conditions under which terrorists can find safe havens from which to attack us. If we’re truly interested in security rather than just world domination, then we should launch an all-out national program to develop and implement clean and renewable sources of energy and energy conservation technologies. We ultimately have no other choice anyway, but we’ll all be a lot better off if we do it sooner rather than later.
         And finally, we need a spiritual renewal. Not with an intolerant fundamentalist version of any creed, but with something both deeper and higher than the apparently insatiable drive for material wealth that can never satisfy the real cravings of the human soul. It’s time for a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
 
 

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