Moregan Trail

“Why do we insist on framing religious issues dualistically, when anyone with a shred of experience of religion knows religion doesn’t work that way? In our personal lives, we know how malleable creeds are. We know Jews who follow the laws of kashrut—except on the occasions when they order a cheeseburger for dinner. We know evangelical Christians who believe strongly in the rightness of evolution and Roman Catholics who believe in a woman’s right to choose. But we can also point to passages in Scripture that command us to do things we would never dream of doing.

In America, we don’t stone adulterers. We no longer buy and sell human beings (although students of history will recall that slavery’s supporters often used biblical justification for their way of life). Most of us make our peace with these contradictions, most of the time the contradictions between scriptural mandates and practice, and between the scriptural age and modernity. We don’t ask more from religion than religion can give.

Yet when under threat, or when we imagine ourselves to be under threat (for it is unclear what kind of lingering threat Major Hasan’s actions realistically pose), we want religion to be definitive. Despite our intimacy with the heterogeneous nature of religious belief, we allow ourselves to be seduced by cartoon characterizations in public: thus, all Mormons hate gays; all Buddhists love peace; all evangelicals believe the earth is merely 6,000 years old. If we have learned anything in this post–9/11 era, it’s that there is no definitive religious interpretation. There are only narrow- and broad-minded interpreters.

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— (via newsweek) (via kateybasye)