As
a minister I hate to admit this: Jesus died of clergy abuse.
Preachers in flowing robes put him through a
mock trial. Priests “all condemned him as
deserving death.” Religious scholars were falsely certain he had blasphemed
their Temple.
For Jesus’ accusers, the Temple had ceased to
be a poetic portal into the Transcendent; it’s architecture no longer thrilled
them with visions of mercy. Rather, the
Temple was just a symbol of their rigid dogma which justified their prejudices.
Jesus died turning the tables on such religion. My grandfather never looked more like Jesus than
when he stood up to a similar religious bunch by helping a divorced woman they
had shunned. He told me, “It’s a
terrifying thing to tell anyone they are not fit for the Kingdom of God.” I have no doubt the woman my grandfather
welcomed had accusers who were as sincere as those who crucified Jesus. They thought they were preserving the dignity
of the church-temple which Jesus said he would rebuild. Yet, unexamined certitudes like theirs trained
people to quit coming to congregations.
But leaving church didn’t make Americans
more patient. Shedding the yoke of
organized religion didn’t make us nice. Peter
Beinart in a piece in the Atlantic
does an analysis that strongly suggests that as we leave the church, believe it
or not, we sometimes can become even more abrasive. On all sides of the political spectrum we now
make uncritical and uncompromising demands of other people and institutions
with a coarseness which would have shocked my grandfather. It turns out that abusiveness isn’t caused by
church attendance. The capacity for self-righteousness
runs deep within us all. And, since nobody
lives without making moral claims, can we be so sure that being part of a
community which scrutinizes moral inquiry is a narrow thing? Believing their Lord was killed by toxic
religion might produce a church full of mercy. Is it possible a faith community
might even serve as a check on the very meanness so many of us thought we were
leaving when we quit church?
