The Madness of Crowds

So Jerry Falwell is dead. It appears that the evangelist and founder of Liberty University had premonitions of his impending demise - perhaps he was the real deal and was forewarned by a higher power, or perhaps it was just his everyday sort of rambling about gloom and doom, or maybe this is stuff that his people made up after the fact to put a halo around him. In any event the media believes that speaking ill of the dead is bad for ratings so they mostly had Falwell-lovers eulogize for him and remind us all how loving he was. When mention was made of his intolerance or his blaming certain segments of society for national tragedies, his defenders would point to the Bible and say that Jerry was only saying what the book says.

Growing up in Pakistan in the 70’s and 80’s I was awed by the power of the dominant religion there. It seemed somewhat silly that PTV had Arabic news broadcasts, that I had to read so much Arabic at school when I could hardly read Urdu, that it was somehow sinful to eat three square meals during Ramadan. If things were good for evangelicals of the dominant faith, they must not have been so good for certain minorities. I recall having to swear and affirm on more than one occasion that Qadianis are non-believers, and I remember how Hindus were not allowed to read their scriptures at school while we read ours. I understood early on that much of this piety and sanctimony was just for show and as with all things in life this too was all about the Benjamins (i.e. money), but I also knew that some people took all this more seriously than they ought to.

Unlike Pakistan, religious people in America by and large are a very decent bunch. There are many good deeds done by faith-based organizations here, from running soup kitchens to lobbying for victims of violence overseas in places like Darfur. Many churchgoers are average hardworking taxpayers who live and work like everyone else.

But since the mid-70’s organized religion has become big business and has corrupted our government and its policies. Churches have become non-profit corporations that command vast financial resources and use their vote bank and money to impose their ideology on the state. These groups have become so dominant in the Republican party that no Republican candidate dares to contest a national election without first going to Bob Jones or a similar right-wing organization to pledge his loyalty. They use wedge issues like homosexuality and abortion to rile up their base, and they preach intolerance openly and with much venom. This is a free country, so I have no problem with right-wing lunatics having their say, but the problem I (and dare I say most Americans) have with this bunch is that they want to get into my head and tell me how to think and how to live my life. Hence the terms "Jesus-land" and "flyover country" are commonly used by big-city folks to refer to what they perceive as the nutjobs in the heartland.

Would the world be better off without religion? But no that’s not the issue, I believe in our Constitution which gives people the right to practice any religion they please or none at all. The world would be better off though if people could keep their religion to themselves, keep it off the public airwaves, keep it out of schools, and not be allowed tax exemptions for religious organizations. If the religious right had been kept in check in America we may not have had a debacle in Iraq or a one-sided policy on issues relating to the Middle East. If the mullahs in Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and other Middle-Eastern countries had been kept at bay there would not have been all this sectarian strife, pointless insurgency or abuse of minorities. The world really would have been a better place.