No Mass, please, we're British!

“God and religion are two very very different things.” — Sinead O’Connor on Sky News (September 15 2010).

With this simple sentence, the manifest of the Post-Religionist generation was posted on the billboard of human consciousness.

This simple statement has done for modern spirituality what Martin Luther’s 95 theses, hammered to a church door in Wittenberg in 1517, did for the Reformation.

This simple statement could very well become the cornerstone of 21st century man’s (and woman’s) search for values and morality.

And indeed, the search is on. With the lukewarm British reception of the Pope, and, indeed, with the wholly unprecedented credibility crisis of the Roman Catholic Church — for centuries one of the strongest pillars of Western political and social power — a vacuum is slowly opening up, a huge gaping hole in the consciousness of modern Western culture.

All certainty is lost. If the Church cannot be trusted — if the highest authority of the Church, the Pope, stands revealed as a liar — it will reveal a major fault line in the value system that many have taken for granted until recently.

Of course, there are those of us who have been aware of the fault line for quite some time. When I say “us”, I include a large number of disparate folk and fringe groups who had long ago left organised religion behind for various reasons: the atheists, the New Agers, the Zen Buddhists, the agnostics, as well as people like myself, who still value the Bible stories without feeling the need to call myself a Christian or to worship together with like-minded folk, in a building with a denominational label stuck to the facade.

The advantage of belonging to the loosely defined group that I have been part of for some time — whom I call “Post-Religionists” for lack of a simpler term — is that we do not share the shock and the bitterness experienced in this day by many practising Catholics. As the full extent of the child abuse horror that seems to have permeated the Church for decades is finally coming out into the open, thousands of ordinary devout churchgoers are seething with contempt and revulsion. The hierarchy they have placed their trust in is crumbling. They have suddenly been left without a framework, a safe haven, a theological point of reference. Like sheep abandoned by the shepherd, they are stumbling along without direction.

This horrific scandal engulfing the Pope and his employees could, from the point of view of organised religion, not have come at a worse time.

Not just the Catholic Church, but all traditional mainstream Christian denominations have been under siege for some time. They have been haemorrhaging members to the left and the right for decades; scores have simply drifted away towards no particular destination, while many others have joined one of the countless fundamentalist groups which have been gaining strength ever since Billy Graham pitched his first tent. This last group is not really “Post-Religionist”, but rather yet another faction — perhaps the only really fast-growing faction — of the total belief system known as Christianity.

Christianity is not the only religion that is experiencing a process of disintegration, fractionalisation and polarisation. Broadly speaking, the modern shift in emphasis towards Post-Religionism can be said to affect all religions. In fact, one can make a sharp divide and split the world of today into two camps: religious people and irreligious people. I’m not quite sure which group is winning, but both sides are certainly becoming more vocal, more hostile, and more intolerant, to the point where the difference of opinion is threatening to destabilise every facet of our global society. In fact, religious and inter-religious differences has become the new Cold War. This is no longer a contentious point of view. It is common knowledge.

Of course, as a Post-Religionist, it would be easy for me to point a finger and say: “I told you so.” But the situation is simply too serious for flippancy (I have tried to be flippant about it, admittedly, in my previous blog entry called “Soon, the jihad may come to a church bazaar near you”, but that was before the full extent and the horror of the Catholic abuse scandal had really sunk in). People are dying, and have been dying, because of religiosity. I’m not just referring to the suicides of abused children within the Catholic Church, I’m referring to the horrors of 9/11, the atrocities of Al Qaeda, the persecution of Christians in many countries, and the countless casualties in the Middle East wars and skirmishes during the last few decades.

Far be it for me, though, to burn any so-called holy books, to deface churches, or even to support the banning of the burka. My Post-Religionistic stance is not militant. I find writers like Richard Dawkins slightly too hysterical for my liking. If I have a preferred brand of post-theology, I much prefer the writings of Dr Abel Pienaar and Andre Comte-Sponville (author of The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality). I have discovered, first-hand, that there are still many likeable religious people in the world, people whose belief systems give meaning and purpose to their lives without them stepping on the rights of others. I have lived for a year in the Bo-Kaap, a Moslem neighbourhood in Cape Town. I have holidayed in Turkey and made a point of befriending the locals. My best friend in the suburb where I now live is a serious Christian (we do not exactly share the same faith, but we share a love of good beer and music, and when we get together our children play together in the garden). There is a place in this world for normal, sane religious practices, just as there is a place for normal and sane atheists in the world.

Also, I must confess right here and now that, even though I cannot call myself a Christian, I really love most of the New Testament. I find the tale of Jesus Christ immensely inspiring. And, as for the old religions, I must admit having a weak spot for Judaism. This is not entirely rational, I know, and, because I am not a Zionist, I find it very hard to reconcile my love for Jewish symbolism with the current state of affairs in Israel. But I will never be able to forget how much I was helped by wonderful Old Testament scriptures such as contained in the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastics, and Psalms. These wonderful passages of ancient literature were my reference point during my personal battle to give up drugs. They gave me courage to do the right thing and to set my life in order. Though I am, and will remain, a Post-Religionist, I could never hate religion as such. I remember many aspects of religion fondly.

Religion has been, and still is, probably an indispensable step in the evolution of human consciousness on this planet. We should treasure it the way we treasure vintage cars, old typewriters and strange architectural constructs such as the Voortrekker Monument.

I would urge those of us who feel the same way as I do — those who fall into the category of Post-Religionist — to try and exercise tolerance and respect towards sincere believers of any faith.

However, this tolerance cannot extend further than what common sense dictates. It is a tolerance that, ideally, should stretch both ways. If, in the Pope’s world view, all non-believers are to be compared with Nazis — for this is what he actually suggested in Britain, among other things — it is a fact that the leader of the largest single grouping of the largest religion on Earth has shown himself to be utterly undemocratic, downright naïve and, well, astonishingly rude.

If I were to say, in this blog, that all Christians are Nazis, or that all Muslims are terrorists, or any such nonsensical thing, I would be guilty of a serious human-right violation. Even in a society where free speech is valued, such sentiments would, and should attract censure.

If I am mature enough to refrain willingly from such dangerous talk, who gives the Pope the right to ignore normal standards of common decency? And why has he not been charged for hate speech? Is he, for some mysterious reason, above reproach? I don’t think so.

He has after all, not been appointed by God, but is simply an elected leader of a man-made hierarchy of clergymen, of whom an alarming percentage seems to have been, or still may be, practising paedophiles.

My vote goes to Sinead O’Connor in this matter.