On asking the right question (for me)

On Wednesday we had a great class discussion on religious pluralisms, or the lack thereof, and examined together six of the mainstream models for how a person of faith might respond internally and externally to the reality that there are multiple religions thriving here in our world. These responses range from absolutism, the belief that there is only one way to access God (the ultimate reality) and my religion whichever-religion-that-might-be has it, to something called Complimentary Pluralism which postulates that there are multiple paths(religions) to different and equally true ultimate realties (God, Nirvana, etc) but all of these ultimate truths share common unifying principles. For Complimentary Pluralism the different paths to the ultimate truths reflect different questions and different answers, so they are not competing with each other or canceling each other out - they compliment each other. E asked us to look through the range of models for religious pluralism and think about which one each of us resonated with the most or the least.

I'm not entirely happy with any of them, but models are simply lenses through which we examine a common and not-quite-describable reality, so one can't expect a perfect fit. I suppose I like Complimentary Pluralism the best, mostly because I agree that a large part of substantial meaning-making in human life is how we formulate questions about our lives. I spent six years working as an interviewer in a longtitudinal study examining the long term effects of child abuse and neglect. If there was one thing I learned about method during that time it was that the way the questions are written ultimately affect the outcome more than anyone who thinks they are collecting data "objectively" would like to admit. I learned this again on my road to motherhood, which had several bumps and u-turns in it for me that at times felt quite tragic. I found that certain questions (why? for example) were just not helpful in sad situations, but that if I could step away from the impulse to find The Answer and work on asking a more productive question then I could make meaning out of the more baffling experiences of my life. (a quite personal example of how this worked for me can be found here, but classmates especially and other readers you are under no obligation to click on that link!)

So the three religions under discussion in this class are ultimately asking and answering different questions about what it means to be a human being. All the questions and answers involve an ultimate truth that all three describe as the One God. For me, at this point, it really boils down to understanding  the questions that are being asked - what is the question, why would one ask it, how does the constant working out of asking this question shape human life similarly or differently than it would if one was asking a different question? How does this question make meaning, and does this resonate with me?

I have a feeling that with enough examination most of the questions that varying religions are asking would resonate on some level with most of us - IF we understood them. My family, background, cultural conditioning, geographic location, socio-economic reality and other specifics affect my ability to ask questions, what I think is important, what I notice, and the capacity I have to understand how to make theological meaning. I wish that the impulse to make my question everyone's question was something that my religion could let go. And I have hope for this possibility - I see Christians model it more often than one might expect. I think there is more important work to be done, the work of love - one of the most central answers to the question(s) that resonate for me.

Pluralism and Perfection

This week our readings focused on the history and origins of Islam, and the two readings I have done so both seem to be speaking from Muslim positions - the introduction to our assigned translation of the Qu'ran and No god but God by Reza Aslan which is a basic apologetic introduction to Islam. Both readings are focused on more modern and less fundamentalist interpretations of the history and sacred text of Islam.

What I'm noticing as I read, especially in the Aslan work, is that the theme of perfection runs throughout Islam. The Qu'ran is the perfect book handed down directly from Allah to the Prophet, the language it is written in is perfect and cannot be translated without losing the quality that makes it scripture to the community of faith (although I am fascinated with the idea that one doesn't need to understand Arabic to benefit from hearing the Qu'ran read aloud) and now as I am being exposed for the first time to the stories of Muhammad it seems to me that this is the perfect prophet, a man without mistakes and beyond blame.  Aslan in particular goes the distance to provide context for some of the stories about the Prophet that seem scandalous in the present day - like the ten wives he acquired in ten years after his first wife died.

I can't help but contrast this with the big time prophets I am familiar with from the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, all of whom are in some way obviously and deeply flawed. Even the New Testament characters associated with Jesus are pretty imperfect individually and as a whole portrayed as a rather clueless bunch.  The one exception in Christianity is, I suppose, Jesus himself. But even Jesus is mediated to us through four very different account of his life, which seems less than perfect. And for Christians he is not a prophet, but part of our Trinitarian God.

I resist the notion of a perfect scripture and perfect prophet.* I think this is natural - I have been socialized to love the quirks of my own religion the best. I suppose that it is ironic that despite all the perfection claimed by Islam the authors I have read so far this week are about the same sort of project that any academic person of faith is about - diligently seeking context and further understanding in order to place and work with a scripture that was produced in a very specific time and place and then put forward as a timeless document meant to guide a community into eternity.


* I do want to note that there are plenty of Christians who wouldn't resist this at all. In fact as I learn more about Islam I am continually struck by how many of their supposedly unique assumptions about God, the supremecy of scripture, and submission as the highest calling of the relgious person are shared and reflected in some of the more dominant Christianities here in this country.

on practice and belief

The past week or so in class we have been focused on the shared history of the three "religions of the book" and how they began to depart from each other. One of the more interesting nuances is around the intersection of belief and practice. Last week E. gave a presentation on washing rituals in the three different religions. All three use water for some sort of ritual bathing, but there is an important difference that this study of the different rituals brought out for us. 

In Judaism there is an intense focus on right practice. This is what makes you a Jew by religion: that you behave like a religious Jew. 

In Christianity there is an intense focus on right belief. I cannot count the times I was assured as a child growing up in an Evangelical, holiness movement tradition that it was what was "in my heart" that mattered. This is what makes you a Christian (for many) that you believe like a Christian.

In Islam both are vital. For a class assignment I am looking more deeply into the prayer rituals and practices of Islam and it is very clear that no prayer can be made without an internal, individual pure intention. However, one's intention does not excuse the need for precise and correct practice of the ritual. This is what makes you a Muslim - that you believe like a Muslim AND behave like one. Faltering on either course risks one's salvation.

Now I am sure that there are plenty of people from any of the three religions being discussed who would disagree with the statements above. I'm going to focus in this post on the one I know something about - my own. 

 I resist the intense focus on right belief (orthodoxy) in Christianity. I am an Episcopalian - we are sacramental and people of the "middle way" between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. One of the unique aspects of Anglican spirituality among the Christianities is a focus on right worship not right belief.  (An example of how this plays out: recently while working with a local Episcopal congregation I found myself in the role of moderator during a fierce debate around whether or not that place should say the Nicene creed during worship. Some people felt that saying it excluded people who might not agree with it. Others felt that it was part of the tradition and should be said whether people literally believed every word or not. Note - the argument was not over whether the creed was "true" but whether it would be a good worship practice to always say it.) But I didn't grow up Episcopalian, and I know quite well that especially in this country most people who claim Christianity as a faith tradition operate under a theology of individualism, based on their individual and personal relationship with Jesus Christ. This is something that is almost exclusively based on belief, not practice. I find this problematic.

Here's the problem with attempting to regulate and control or unify religious belief without emphasis on practice. What I believe affects how I behave - I don't think many people in modern American culture would dispute that. But what I do, my practice, also affects how I believe. It seems to me that in Christianity there is a temptation to pretend that if we believe correctly it won't matter what we do, or that if we believe correctly we'll automatically do the right things - as individuals and as communities. If we were Jewish we might think the same thing, but the other way 'round - that if we just do the right things, our internal life and belief will sort itself out (personally I like this idea better, but that tells you more about who I am than anything).  I think that, taken to extremes there are some problems there as well. 

So maybe it comes down to why we act, why we believe, what religion is ultimately for. Doing theology, for me, is the process of creative meaning making that includes input from and regard of that which I and my community experiences as Divine. It is a practice, and it happens not from what I believe but out of the things that I do, to include the rite and ritual of my tradition. 

So perhaps Islam has it right? To make both belief and practice essential? I guess the irony for me is that this is also a problem. Both Christianity and Judaism have built within them a little stretching room. Or a lot, depending on what sort of Christian or Jew one is. By focusing on practice over belief, or on belief over practice there is room for sacred wondering, for holy doubting, for intense theological misgivings. There is space, in each faith tradition(s), to accumulate new information about the world and adapt belief and practice to new information about and experiences of God. If both are vital - if you must believe a specific way AND act in a specific way, I wonder where the room to actually make new meaning might be? 

The Mother Book

I am pretty excited about the reading list for this class - it includes scholars that I am familiar with and adore as well as others I've never heard of. I'll link the books as readings from them are assigned. This week the main reading was from Claiming Abraham: Reading the Bible and Qur'an Side by Side by Michael Lodahl, who is a Christian theologian. I'm not going to do a big introduction on the book, or any of them, as most of the folks reading here are classmates who are also reading it but suffice to say he is comparing stories present in both Hebrew Scriptures and the Qur'an and doing critical analysis of them. His bias is clearly and obviously a Christian one, but at least he's honest about it. He is also honest about the potential problems inherent in dealing with the Qur'an in its English translation, and working with a sacred text from outside the community of faith that provides the primary context for interpretation.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all called "Abrahamic" faiths because each religious tradition claims Abraham (of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob fame) as their ancestor. For Judaism and Islam this claim is pretty literal - they see themselves as actual descendants of Abraham and participants in the promise that G-d made to him to make his descendants number as the stars. Christians see Abraham as their spiritual ancestor because Jesus was Jewish and so connected to Abraham. But having the Abraham connection doesn't mean that Abraham's ancestor-ship functions in the same way in all three faiths, so it doesn't necessarily provide as much common ground as one would think. Similarly, how Abraham is written about in the Hebrew Scriptures and Qur'an is quite different. He's just a different guy in the Qur'an, even though his circumstances bear resemblence to the circumstances of the Judeo-Christian Abraham. Really, the Abraham of Judaism and the Abraham of Christianity are pretty different from each other too, even though their source texts are the same.

One of the interesting aspects of the relationship between Islam, Christianity and Judaism that Lodahl really highlighted for me has to do with Islam being the youngest of the three religions. This means that the Qur'an is in many ways in dialogue or acting in response to the internal issues within each of the other two religions as well as the fights they were having with each other over issues of scriptural interpretation, theology, practice and what not. E told us in class last week that most of the biblical characters us Judeo-Christian folk are familiar with are present in the Qur'an but "they're all cleaned up." Lodahl suggests that Mohammad, blessings be upon him, saw all of this and worked for something more clear, something that didn't have the messiness of the Abraham who argued with God and lied to his son, or the scandal of Lot and his daughters.

Mohammad, blessings be upon him, would not have described what he was doing as editing. For Muslims the Qur'an is a perfect copy (when in its original language of Arabic) of the "Mother Book" a heavenly version of scripture that all translations are based upon, including Hebrew Scripture and the Christian New Testament. So for Islam the other two Abrahamic religions are "People of the Book" because their scriptures, while corrupted, are still based upon the heavenly Mother Book.

Ack, so finally I'm getting to what I really wanted to talk about in this post - this concept of something perfect and heavenly being reflected here in the physical world. The Mother Book is strongly reminiscent of Platonic perfect forms, to me, and something that I do have a strong reaction against. I think what I resist in the idea (as I understand it) of the Mother Book is the otherworldly focus, the suggestion that the physical created world is not good enough for God. And this idea is not something unique to Islam. There are plenty of Christians who believe that we are just waiting around for the return of Christ so God can destroy this world and make a new and better one. This is not my belief and ultimately I don't think it's a belief that can be reconciled with the Judeo Christian scriptures. I am curious to see how this theme plays out as we go deeper and learn more.