I was reading a New York Times essay by David Brooks today when I saw a reference to a Gallup Organization survey on religion in America.
Brooks was writing about how religion distorts politics these days, and the survey results were fascinating with one exception.
There was one question from which we could have learned a lot … if only it had been asked.
Sadly, it wasn’t.
Do you believe that all religions other than your own are wrong?
That’s a pretty important omission. If you ask fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Muslims, they would almost certainly say yes. In fact, members of one group would tell members of the other that they might as well be Satan worshippers for how utterly and totally wrong they are.
One of the great villains to them in all this is the late cartoonist Charles Schulz, whose character Linus in the comic strip “Peanuts” gets accused of the worst kind of heresy.
They hate this statement of Linus’s, but of course they are reading more into it than there really is.
Linus, the brightest and most philosophical of Schulz’s characters, wasn’t speaking of religion at all with that famous quote. In fact, he was explaining why he sat in pumpkin patches on Halloween night waiting for the Great Pumpkin to deliever gifts to him.
His statement has nothing to do with religion. Sally tells him it’s crazy to believe in the Great Pumpkin, and he responds by saying that some folks believe in Santa Claus and he believes in the Great Pumpkin.
“It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you’re sincere.”
It was about believing in myths, not about whether someone believed in the correct religion.
It’s ironic in one respect that we spend more time on religious and moral issues at a time when fewer and fewer Americans are attending cuhrttch or even believing in God.
Indeed, the fundamentalists seem to be pushing for more and more control over the way other people live their lives. So-called “culture war” issues are becoming bigger and bigger deal to them, particularly in the area of woemn’s rights and gay rights.
One of the biggest anomalies is with people or the right saying rules matter and a society must have a moral framework to be successful. That’s true, but it matters who creates the framework and sets the rules.
Most people don’t want other people to tell them how to live their lives. If only they would agree to refrain from giving out advice they wouldn’t want to take, we might actually be on the verge of something good.