"Shalom: Looking for Justice in Western Religions"

A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Sunday, September 23, 2001

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana 46256

If you are anything like me, last Sunday, when we gathered here, we were still in a state of shock about what happened September 11. The event was so utterly unthinkable that, though you knew it actually happened, it still seemed unreal, like a gripping suspense novel that was almost painful to read, but you still couldn't put down, and you find yourself thinking about it constantly even when you stop reading it.

If you are like me, as another week has passed, it has started feeling more and more real, less and less fictional, and in some ways that has been more frightening than the initial sudden shock when everything was unbelievable. Gradually, the gravity of what happened begins to weigh heavier. Initially, we'd wake up in the morning, and when our minds went to the event, it would take a while to sort it out and realize it wasn't just a nightmare. Eventually, though, we wake up and know immediately that it really did happen.

And now that we are in that place, now that we find ourselves saying less and less frequently how absolutely unbelievable the whole thing is, now that we see that life must go on, we begin asking ourselves what can be done now. One thing, of course, that can be done is financial support for the families of the victims, and we witnessed what to my mind was an absolutely inspiring two-hour telethon on Friday evening, with stunning performances given by dozens of actors and musical stars from Los Angeles, New York and London. I enjoy the movies as much as anyone, and I'm also, I confess, a fan of a lot of pop music, but I never thought there would be a circumstance under which I could make a broad and sweeping statement that I was proud of Hollywood and music stars. That is a ridiculously broad statement that, under any other circumstances, would sound ludicrous. But on Friday, it was true for me.

As the reality continues to sink in, we begin asking ourselves what can be done now. Heavy on all our hearts are the policy questions. Each of us ponders in our own mind and conscience about how our nation should respond. Terrorism must be stopped, we all agree. What happened last week must never happen again. This week, as the reality of what happened starts sinking in, people are beginning to think about our national response. These, too, are painful things to think consider, and as differing opinions are expressed, we hope to see differences strengthen rather than divide us, particularly because as Unitarian Universalists we claim to value respect for each person's right to his or her opinion.

As the reality continues now to sink in, we realize that however we respond, it is important that we understand as much as we can about what has happened, and why it has happened, and that includes understanding about the cultures that play a role in this unfolding drama.

This morning I wish to explore with you some of these questions. Over the next few months, and probably years, our country will be getting a tutorial course on Western religions. Central to the crisis we are facing is the mistaken notion by many, or perhaps most Americans, that the radical, fundamentalist terrorists who have in fact threatened to kill every one of us are somehow representative of the religion called "Islam." They are not. They no more represent the Islamic religion than Jim Jones represented Christianity at the massacre in Jonestown.

There is a parallel mistaken notion on the part of the fanatical terrorists. They likewise consider themselves to be representative of Islam. They are not. They are a fringe group that most of the rest of the Moslem world has denounced. The killers in Northern Ireland who use terrorist tactic, for example, believe themselves to be representatives of the true Christian religion. The rest of the Christian world knows that is not true.

For very good reason, our eyes are now focused, and will remain focused on the people and culture of the Middle East. The political turmoil and violence we observe in that region is woven together with layers of different religious tradition. This is the home of three major world religions (and several minor ones). The three major religions are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This morning I hope to explore, and try to arrive at a better understanding, of the nature of these three religions, their ideas of peace and justice, and why there seems to be such a long history of animosity among them.

It seems to me important to recognize, for example, that these are the three major Western religions, and that they are closely related by tradition. They are three very different siblings of the same religious family. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have far more in common with each other than any one of them has with any other world religion. Yet this religious triangle seems to have far more belligerance than we find any place else anyplace else.

What these three have in common is tremendously significant. For example, they are the only world-wide religions that are monotheistic -- that worship only one God. In fact, all three place the tenet of monotheism near or at the top of their religious tenets. Judaism was the first monotheistic religion, and belief in one God was the most important characteristic distinguishing them as a religion separate from other folk religions. Perhaps the most frequently repeated ritual Jewish prayer is the one saying, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is One God." Similarly, Islam is solidly monotheistic, and places monotheism as its most important tenet. Among the five religious practices that every Moslem is obliged to follow the first one is repeating its "confession of faith": "There is no God by Allah, and Muhammad is his Prophet."

Christianity is the other world-wide monotheistic religion, though its claim to monotheism is not so clear-cut. The doctrine of the Trinity complicates the notion of "one God," making Jesus "equal to God" in divinity, yet Jesus is generally not considered a "second God," rather just the "son of God," so Christianity still claims to be, and is considered to be, monotheistic.

For each of them, their view of God shares the most important characteristic with the other two views of God. Perhaps it is a bit threatening to have someone claim to be worshipping the real God, when that God is so much like your own.

Religious scholars have a phrase that identifies another common characteristic among these three. Among the world's religions, these three are considered to be "people of the Book." What is meant by that is that these are the only major religions that revere sacred scripture they consider to have come from God. Other religions have their scripture, but only these three, among the major world religions, consider their books to have been inspired, and transmitted, from God. They have the only "holy" scriptures.

The "Book" for Judaism is the "Torah." The "Book" for Christianity is the Bible, containing New and Old Testament. And the "Book" for Islam is the Koran. No other religions hold sacred writings with such reverence and devotion as can be found in these three.

There are other similarities I can, and will, mention, but I hasten to point out that these similarities are to be expected if for no other reason than all three traditions share the same roots in history. Judaism, as I say, was the first monotheistic religion, with its origins about 5,000 years ago. Christianity began about 2,000 years ago as a school of thought within Judaism. From birth to death, Jesus considered himself to be Jewish in both culture and religion. Jews continue to consider him one of the prophets of Judaism. Those who came after Jesus, however, eventually split from Judaism forming a new religion based on his teachings.

About six hundred years later, another movement within Judaism was born with the teachings of Muhammad the Prophet. Like Christianity, Islam was an offspring of Judaism, and like Christianity, it feels its Prophet to have developed or evolved religion into an improved version. Like Christianity, Islam includes the Jewish prophets, such as Abraham and Moses, within its own tradition -- they were precursors of Islam. Jesus is also in that list. He was a precursor of Islam and a prophet of Allah, six centuries before Muhammad.

I give all this background about the similarities among these three religions in order to emphasize how much we have in common. There are many people who know virtually nothing about Islam, and by looking at different ways of dressing and different ways of praying, they imagine that their people and culture and tradition have nothing in common with our people and culture and tradition. We have far more in common than most of us imagine.

We have so much in common, in fact, that it seems to have led at times, and among some of us, to hostile relations on each side. It is not exactly like sibling rivalry, but perhaps that comes close. It is more like, I suppose, the feeling one gets when you grow up and see your brother or sister make choices you think are wrong. If our siblings really respected the choices we made, then they would follow through by believing what we believe. But the fact that they went down a different path can make us resentful.

Our own culture, to the extent it is predominantly Christian, can look at the Moslems, knowing they had every chance, living in the land of Jesus, to have followed the Christian path. But the fact that they didn't, that they chose another path, can make us resentful. The Middle Eastern cultures, to the extent that they are predominantly Muslim, can look at the Christian world, knowing that it, too, was once on the right path but somehow chose to leave it.

Part of what I'm wanting to consider here is that many of the hostile feelings that come out among these religious cultures is enhanced not because we have so little in common, but rather because there is a closer relationship than we realize on the surface.

[Perhaps just as an interesting aside, I sometimes like to point out a similar irony in the Unitarian Universersalist tradition. In many ways, we Unitarian Universalists have more in common, and are far more closely related, with the Baptists and evangelicals than with Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Methodists. Most of mainstream Protestantism traces their heritage back to Martin Luther in Germany or John Calvin in Geneva. Luther and Calvin rebelled against the authority of the Pope, but the churches they established, while rejecting Catholicism, remained institutions with hierarchical authority. Unitarians and Baptists and evangelicals are historically unrelated to Luther or Calvin. Our Protestant origins were in Eastern Europe, and a movement known sometimes as the Radical Reformation, sometimes as the Anabaptists, sometimes as the "left wing of the Reformation," and the churches created by these movements rejected hierarchical authority and insisted that each congregation should rule itself. So herein is an interesting irony: historically we have much more in common with the evangelicals -- we were born of the same reformation parents --yet there is today far more tension between them and us than there is beween us and the mainstream Lutherans, Presbyterians or Methodists.]

I'd like to look for a moment at one more commonality among these three Western religions. In ways that are inconceivable to almost any other major world religion, these three religions are legalistic; they are religions of law.

When I was a college student in Washington D.C. many years ago, I took a part time job at the Library of Congress. They were moving their law library, and my job was the labor intensive one of literally moving the books from one shelf to another. It took me nearly six weeks of part-time work to move one section their collection - the section that was called "canon law." These were books from the 16th and 17th and 18th century concerning how the Christian church, which was then holding vast political power, should apply its laws not just to church members, but to society at large. At the time I wondered, in passing, why books on canon law should be kept in the law library rather than in the theology or even history section, but eventually it became obvious that there is a close historical tie between our societal and church laws. I think of those dusty books of canon law every time I hear someone advocate posting the 10 Commandments in schools or the courthouse.

By and large, Christianity, while it only rarely rules the state these days, has continued to be a religion of laws. "Thou Shalt" and "Thou Shalt Not" seem to be the basis of many, perhaps most, Christian sermons. Different factions have different rules about drinking or marrying or observing the Sabbath. Some have loose rules and some have rigid rules, but it is generally fair to say that nearly all schools of Christianity would affirm that if you are a Christian you are expected to follow certain rules of behavior.

The original "Thou Shalt" commandments belong, of course, to the Jewish tradition, which is also a religion of law. There are important personal rules drawn from the scriptures, such as dietary laws and Sabbath laws, but there are also intricate ethical rules elaborated in ancient commentaries on scripture. Like Christianity, there is a history of ambiguous lines between religious laws and government laws, though since the majority of Jews over the centuries have lived in other countries due to the scattering of Jews across the globe during the diaspora.

Islam is similarly a religion of laws. It has its list of rules for personal and cultural behaviors. In fact, this may be one of the few facts about Muslims that is widely known in our culture -- that it has specific rules of dress and diet and behavior. Again, from country to country there are varying degrees of rigidity by which the rules are expected to be followed.

As with the history of Judaism and Christianity, it is the tradition within Islam that the lines between religious laws and laws of the state are not well defined. In some ways the sense of "community" serves a stronger role in the Islamic cultures than it does in the others, and partly because the division between religious and secular laws has not, over the years, been as defined in Islam.

It is not surprising that religions that are law-based can become, well, legaistic. There is a right way and a wrong way. Again, this law-based religion is not typical of other world religions. In Buddhism or Hinduism or Taoism, for example, there may be different schools of belief, but there is rarely the conviction that one school of Buddhism, for example, is the right way and other schools are wrong. It is a tenet of many Eastern religions that each person is respected for following the religious path of their own choosing.

In looking only at the teachings of these three major Western religions, one does not find teachings that can be construed to be especially militaristic or violent, though violence has played a large role in all their histories, both as perpetrator and as victiims. The fact is that all three have scriptures that teach tolerance and respect for those of other traditions.

We are familiar with some of the basic human rights teachings in the Jewish and Christian traditions. Jesus' teachings speak frequently on this, such as the story of the Good Samaritan. Even the admonition to "love your enemies" and "pray for those who persecute you," is something that while rarely practices, and perhaps unrealistically idealistic for most people, including Christians, still exists to establish a basis for treating one another with tolerance and care.

Islam also has similar teachings and history. In 1981, at the UNESCO meeting, the Islamic Council within the UN presented a document called the "Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights." Islamic scholars, Muslim jurists, and representatives of various movements within the religion prepared the declaration, and each of the twenty three articles are pbased on verses of the Koran. The introduction to the document has these words:

Islam gave humanity an ideal code of human rights 1400 years ago. The purpose of these rights is to confer honor and dignity on humanity, and eliminate exploitation, oppression, and injustice. Human rights in Islam are deeply rooted in the conviction that God, and God alone, is the author of Law and the source of human rights. Given this divine origin, no leader,no government, no assembly or any other authority can restrict, abrogate, or violate in any manner the rights conferred by God.

And while each one has a basic ethic that denies injustice or oppression of those of other religions, they also have, unfortunately, throughout their histories, at the extreme edges, those who choose to be legalistic, judgmental, and fundamentalist. The extremes and excesses we may see are not the product of the teachings, and should not be confused with the teachings of any one of these religions. Such fanaticism has appeared in each of the centuries. As I mentioned last week, It is fanaticism, rather than religion, that endangers the world today. And, unfortunately, this element is one other similarity that exists in all three of these world religions.

One hope I have, as we've witnessed happening in the past 12 days, is that people of any religion live to the "best of their religion"; that the focus is on the tolerance and compassion and care for one another and not making judgments of who is right and wrong on theological matters.

It is important for each and all of us to continue to learn about one another and our different cultures - to respect one another's roots, traditions, and beliefs. It is important for us to think of ourselves as one humanity; not as separate cells, but as related parts of a whole.

Our task before us is double sided. There is no question that terrorism must be eliminated from our world. As this goal is pursued, we have the parallel task of making sure our actions express the best of whatever our religion teaches, and that we look for the best, and respect the best, and encourage the best, of what other religions teach.