Can you blame them? This was the rhetorical question I heard recently, posed by a speaker at a Conference of religious studies teachers that I attended. The answer to the question was supposed to be No, and most of the audience seemed to take this to be the correct answer. Nor is this atypical It’s not the first time I have heard the same sort of rhetorical methods employed nor is it the first time I have seen this response.
No doubt readers will wonder what this question was in response to so let me spell out the context. The speaker was articulating various demographics about the growth of religious belief and practise in contemporary Australia. While doing so he told the following story: A woman and her family had been actively involved in a church for many years, however later in her life, her marriage ended in divorce. When this happened the woman was told she was no longer welcome in the church. Her family left. The speaker then passionately told us how her children all now are emphatic that organised religion does more harm than good. After relaying this story he then fired off the rhetorical question ” And who can blame them?”
Had I been less polite I would have stated: “I can”. I think I can blame them. I have heard similar stories over the years from various speakers and must admit to being less than keen on the enthusiastic apologetic self-flagellation that Christian’s often engage in over such stories. Here is why
First, is a matter of facts and evidence. One thing I have learnt is that when people have had an acrimonious dispute one should always be hesitant to jump to judgement. In any dispute, especially one involving divorce, parties on both sides will have conflicting stories. Both will claim to be unjustly aggrieved, and sorting out what happened isn’t always easy. In this context, I am reminded of a conversation I had with a family law judge once over dinner. The judge talked about both parties in a dispute expressing “their truth”. Piquing my interest, we got into a discussion about whether he believed the truth was relative. On clarification, however, it became apparent the judge wasn’t affirming relativism instead he was expressing a fact he had observed from years on the bench. When emotions run high and loyalties are betrayed or tested people tend to rationalise, deceive themselves, to minimise their own behaviour and maximise that of others. His point was that the different parties often sincerely believe their own stories. They are convinced what they say is true. Despite the fact that it can’t be. It’s the truth as they see it, even if we might see that it is selective with the facts and distorted. I don’t doubt the judge’s observation that this is common. In light of this, I think we need to be very careful before we judge that a church or church leadership group has acted appallingly in such a dispute. This isn’t to say Churches never act in inappropriate ways, or make pastoral or theological howlers. It’s just the point that, even though they do, we shouldn’t immediately accept as credible every accusation that they have the as unvarnished truth. Before we rush to judgement, we should try and work out whether the claim is credible.
In this particular case there are many questions one would need to ask, for example, how did the divorce occur? Did one spouse commit adultery, was there violence or desertion, and from which spouse? Moreover, if the woman was a member of the church isn’t it at least likely that her husband is as well?
In light of these questions, one can immediately see the situation could be more nuanced than it appears. Suppose the woman had committed adultery, deserted her husband, the church was offering pastoral support to her devastated husband. She was turning up every Sunday with the new man and refusing to acknowledge a problem. In this sort of situation, one can easily sympathise with the churches decision. On the other hand, if the man was a womanising wife beater and the pastoral team were taking his side because “wives should submit to their husbands” the picture is different. The point is I’d want to know more about the picture before I rushed to judgement and said: “who can blame them?”
It shouldn’t need to be said. But it’s simply not true that every time some angry person tells a story about their disputes with a church are that the church is in the wrong and the disputant is in the right. Sometimes it’s the case, and sometimes it isn’t. We owe church leaders more respect and justice than to simply believe without question every single accusation made against them, and to join in sympathetic outrage with every accusation. If we rush to judgement, it’s actually us who are behaving appallingly. So while I am quite sure that church leaders can and sometimes do act in bad ways, accusations still need to be substantiated.
But let’s suppose the story is accurate. The church leadership did behave badly and kicked someone out unjustly. I still think we must answer the speaker’s rhetorical question in the affirmative. Here is why: Note what the speaker said, he said that upon being treated this way the family concluded that organised religion does more harm than good. They didn’t want to be associated with an institution that behaves this way. So they will have nothing more to do with “religion”.
But hang on! Can’t a person be legitimately questioned for drawing this kind of conclusion? What has happened is that one church has done one hurtful or offensive thing on one occasion. How can a person justifiably extrapolate from this that religion does more harm than good? Or even that this is normal or typical for churches per se. To do this, a person would need to look at a representative sample of actions performed by various religious organisations over history. Looking at all the hurtful things religious institutions have done over the centuries and all the beneficial things they have done. There would need to be some weighing of these against one another. And only when this was done could one justifiably conclude that religion causes more harm than good.
To suggest that because an organisation has hurt you and your family, you can, therefore, make a judgement about all religious institutions and their total effect on society and history is, frankly, absurd. It is obviously a bad inference. Moreover, this type of judgment is one we would out rightly condemn as stereotypical or bigoted if it occurred in a different context.
Here is an example: suppose a woman’s husband was in the world trade tower on September 11, 2001. As a result of the attack that morning he is killed, and she is overcome with grief. We would feel justified empathy with her, situation, it’s awful, and she has clearly been wronged, unjustifiably widowed by someone else’s criminal conduct. Does it follow however that we can now justifiably go along with her families claim that all Muslims are terrorists and complicit in such behaviour? Obviously not, to do this would, in fact, to sanction stereotyping and to put it bluntly bigotry.
Or, to use another example, suppose someone is walking home and is attacked by an African American male. He is beaten and hospitalised and dies from the mugging. The victim’s family are angry in a fit of rage they declare that African American males are a scourge and want nothing to do with any African American men they do more harm than good? What would we say? “Can you blame them?” I think we can and would; we would call this racial prejudice. I think we would understand the anger and sympathise with their pain, but we would also recognise that this pain and anger has twisted or warped their perspective so that they are promoting, without evidence, harmful generalisations about others. And we would want to challenge those generalisations. Of course, this may need to be done in a sensitive and tactful way. But the fact we are sensitive and tactful doesn’t mean we grant what they say is justified. It isn’t. They have allowed their rage and anger to become pathological and bigoted and this isn’t blameless.
One might wonder why I am harping on about an anecdotal story I have heard in a talk. Here is why: the story I heard and the response I witnessed to it is, I think, representative of something common. Throughout many years at Bible college, University, and witnessing general culture I have often seen people react this way to claims about abuse on the part of religious leaders, and it bothers me that people react this way.
My studies have taught me that there are in popular culture false narratives about religious people and religious institutions. Some of these narratives are so notorious historians have given them names The black legend, the myth of a dark ages, the Whig view of history, the conflict thesis, myths about the Crusades in their own way these different narratives are deep in popular psychology and they tell a narrative about the role of religious institutions in our society and history. These narratives are also false. But, their falsity isn’t often appreciated in popular culture. It’s also worth noting these narratives can be harmful. A few years ago I studied the terror that occurred during the French revolution, and it was eye opening how some of these sorts of narratives were used to murder people. The idea of religion as an institution which inevitably oppresses the downtrodden was a well-known Marxist trophe[1]and it was used to justify the slaughter of thousands. Obviously, not everyone who believes these things is going to kill, but we need to call a spade a spade. A false narrative based on selective and stereotypical reasoning is still a false narrative, and if such a narrative can and has been harmful, we need to be candid about this, it can be used this way. Sticks and stones break bones and names can hurt you.
So when the speaker asks, “can we blame them” I answer “yes we can” In all walks of life people suffer, have disputes and can be unjustly treated, does this justify them in generalising about whole groups of people? No, it doesn’t. The fact the topic is religion doesn’t change this fact.
[1] Compare for example Karl Marx’s “religion is the opium of the people’ Mao Tse Tung’s “Religion is Poison” and the title of Christopher Hitchen’s bestselling “God is not Great How Religion Poison’s Everything” (emphasis mine)
