What roles can religion & spirituality play in current social movements ?

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What roles can religion & spirituality play in current social movements ?

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Started 1 year ago by TomOver
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TomOver
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rus said:
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/09/journal-notes-on-the-tea-partys-open-source-organization.html

Interesting that John Robb quotes Dick Armey at the top of his article. Various folk at the Stop The Machine occupation in DC, such as Jim Hightower, Kevin Zeese, and David Swanson told me Armey and the Koch brothers co opted the Tea Party.

One of the impressions I'm getting as I persist with getting more involved in activism is that the nominally progressive/left- of- center aspects of the mainstream media may have propagandized many mainstream progressives regarding the Tea Party, painting it with a broad brush as just a bunch of poorly informed White folk frazzled about having a Black president, and seeking to blame all of their problems on undocumented immigrants, instead of looking to corporate America and their enablers in government.

I've been constantly on guard about the propaganda coming from the right leaning/conservative aspects of the mainstream media, but not so when it came to their counterparts on the nominal left such as MSNBC.

The link to John Robb's site includes comments about how Dems and Repubs are two branches of what is essentially a one party system that excludes so-called third parties--whether Libertarian or the Green Party.

It may be worth exploring the question of whether mainstream media may have two branches of what is essentially the same corporate-big government propaganda machine.

As I've said before, common ground between rank-and-file conservatives and rank-and-file progressives could be a force for constructive change.

But the Devil is in the details. It's complex. Just as right-leaning outlets such as Fox sympathized with the Tea Party, left leaning outlets sympathize with Occupy. But like Fox may have done thru Beck and other news personalities, liberal news outlets may facilitate the process of co opting Occupy.

I will be honest. I'm not clear on these details. But I'll post this anyway. I figure anyone who's interested can do me the favor of correcting me on any aspect of what I say in this post. I'm throwing ideas out there while in a bit of a mental fog.

Posted 1 year ago #
TomOver
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Twixlen said:
+1

To that end, there was a great debate that touched on this - NPR has the full audio -

Would The World Be Better Off Without Religion

Guess Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens couldn't make it or weren't invited to NPR's mini-panel.

Posted 1 year ago #
TomOver
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To clarify, the emphasis in this thread---for me at least----is 'spirituality.' That word is used to denote a process by which a person derives a sense of purpose beyond short-term, mundane thinking. 'Spirit' here is used in the sense of, for example, "the spirit of the laws." Its meaning pertains to one's deepest sense of intention.

For some, 'spirituality' requires a belief in deities and an after world. For others, it doesn't. Though I myself am agnostic, increasingly I get the sense addressing our social and environmental challenges might require us to create new forms of 'spirituality'---perhaps versions of it that blend better with scientific reasoning and other aspects of human rational faculties.

Posted 1 year ago #
TomOver
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upstairs said:
"The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion". Quote by George Washington.

"While we are under the tyranny of Priests, it will ever be their interest, to invalidate the law of nature and reason, in order to establish systems incompatible therewith" Quote by Ethan Allen, (leader of the famed "Green Mountain Boys Vermont Militia).

"the grand object of all civil and religious tyrants...has been to suppress all the elevated operations of the mind, to kill the energy of thought, and through this channel to subjugate the whole earth for their own special emolument".
Quote by Elihu Palmer.

"Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, anymore than our opinions of physics or geometry". Quote by Thomas Jefferson.

"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools, and the other half hypocrites."
Quote by Thomas Jefferson.

"To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists of holding humanity in contempt is like administrating medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture. Enjoy, sir, your insensibility of feeling and reflecting. It is the prerogative of animals. And no man will envy these honors in which a savage only can be your rival and a bear your master". Quote by Thomas Paine.

Basically, the more you uncover, it becomes very clear that our country was not founded on Christianity. I am not a meme cast typed libertarian, just someone who started studying the constitution and the History of the United States so as to have a clear compass about where we have come from and where we are going.

Edit. I stated "whatsoever", which is ignorant to express. Secondly, I am not an anti Christian, I was reacting to another post expressing the origins of our country. Also, of course Martin Luther King Junior should have "meddled" in politics, as he did, more than meddle. I think that one's personal spirituality makes up the foundation of one's philosophy or system of behavior and thought.
I suppose the term "spirituality" is highly subjective.

Thanks for the quotes, though I don't relate to the speciesist view Paine expressed in this case. But comparing, disfavorably, nonhuman animals to my favorite primate has been a common polemic practice.

Posted 1 year ago #
TomOver
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Maybe Love is the answer, not religion, per se.

Posted 4 months ago #
tdziemia
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I think ORGANIZING is the answer (somehow I missed this thread on its first incarnation ... pun intended).

In my view, the main thing religious groups have going for them when it comes to participating in social movements is infrastructure They can galvanize people repeatedly (and often across a broad geography) for a given cause; they run at low cost because of volunteerism.

While I am not a historian (but rather a practicioner of "a little knowledge being a dangerous thing," when it comes to history), it seems to me that perhaps the Western World's greatest social justice movement was also a movement AWAY from religion, namely the enlightenment. I think just about every religious instituion you can name will have a mixed track record on social justice, same as any government. So, while the Catholic church in which I was raised can point to some valid contributions to social justice, their positions on the Holocaust, fighting the spread of AIDS and covering up rampant child molestation were somewhat less than moral high ground.

I don't think either religion or spirituality is needed. You just need a conscience and the conviction to take actions aligned with what your conscience tells you. I suppose altruism also helps (you can call that love if you'd like, but I don't because altruism can be exhibited toward total strangers, and in my book, love cannot).

Why would you need to believe in God?

Posted 4 months ago #
rus

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tdziemia said:

Why would you need to believe in God?

If you understand, no explanation is necessary.
If you do not understand, no explanation is possible.

Posted 4 months ago #
tdziemia
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Unfair! Out of context!

Of course what I meant was: Why is belief in God (religion) required to get involved in social movements?

Not disagreeing with anything said by previous posters about good works (or bad ones) of various religious institutions (or the bad ones). I just see no logical or empirical link. And based on both my upbringing and evolution of my personal beliefs, I think I'm in an excellent position to understand. So I ain't buying that either :-)

Posted 4 months ago #
rus

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tdziemia said:

Of course what I meant was: Why is belief in God (religion) required to get involved in social movements?

First, belief in God and Religion are two different things.

Second, I'd suggest that for at least the core group of any cause there must be a religion-like devotion to ideology, regardless as to the claimed divinity of that ideology.

Posted 4 months ago #
Manatee
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It's not necessary for some people to have religion or spirituality to be socially moral. It is necessary for others.

Some people use religion and spirituality as a form of passing down wisdom over many generations. Some use it to pass down hate and intellectual laziness. Some use it to pass down something boring to do every Sunday.

Religion and spirituality are just things that our brains do, that we can use for or against the common good. And that is all totally subjective.

I have to say that in the last year, I've gotten really, really sick of people saying "there's no empirical evidence that religion is necessary". Religion is like poetry, it is neither true nor false in the way that people think empirical data is.

Secondly, we can put religion in the true/false column because unlike many indigenous cultures around the world, our religion is no longer place-based. It is not inextricably tied with our survival. Our religion or lack thereof is mostly in our heads. Looking at all indigenous cultures and telling them that the very glue that holds them together "isn't necessary" seems a bit presumptuous to me.

Third, for the love of %^#@!, just because you point out that the existence of God does or doesn't square with the scientific method doesn't automatically rocket your IQ into the stratosphere or make you some kind of exciting revolutionary vanguard. You're an atheist, fine, get on with it, but it kills me to see atheists act like everyone else is dragging their knuckles barely walking upright while Richard Dawkins teleports to exciting new vistas of transhumanism. Don't be reactionary against the small but vocal band of US creationist reactionaries; it only feeds them.

Good people are good people, I think we all have a pretty good idea of who they are when we're standing next to them. Splitting hairs about what transported them there may be fascinating, until we start pointing fingers and saying "I don't like how you got here. It wasn't through the scientific method", or "It wasn't through Jesus", etc. etc.

Posted 4 months ago #
Manatee
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Oh and another thing--

I put religion and spirituality in a the same category as art, poetry, and emotions.

I think human consciousness has evolved over time. If we picture our consciousness like a set of nesting dolls, the one on the very inside is our lizard/survival brain. Then I think the emotive and intuitive/spiritual faculties came into play, when we needed to have a "gut feeling" about whatever was going on, at any moment. Then as communities enlarged into societies, we had to have reason/business/egalitarianism come into play, because we could no longer be familiar with everything. Reason is a leveler, but it is also a barrier between us.

All this to say, the first levels are larger and rougher than the most recent levels. Without our physical brain we would not have our lizard brain, without our lizard brain we would not have emotions/spirit/art, and without spirit and art we would not, I believe, have reason.

Reason is the fine-tuning, the detail. But detail alone doesn't work. Without their emotions and intuition, perhaps a scientist would never have the daydream about their most exciting hypothesis while in the shower. Without the lizard brain maybe they wouldn't have even gotten out of bed.

The brain doesn't walk alone.

Posted 4 months ago #
hugh59
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Some of the writers here make a lot of assumptions about what religious organizations are and how they function. I am active with a social justice organization called BREAD that is made up of over 50 churches, synagogues, and mosques from all over the Columbus area. The organization does no prostheletyzing; nobody is trying to convert to anyone or preach to anyone. Instead, we have house meetings to poll our members for neighborhood issues that concern us, then hold rallies where we vote on issues to be addressed. Past accomplishments have been an affordable housing trust, a land bank to deal with vacant and abandoned housing, a commitment by the school board to stop using out of school suspensions as punishment for truancy, and the implementation of a program of defendant screening for criminal cases in the municipal courts. This past year our focus has been on trying to get City Council to begin a program to create a series of non-tech related small business incubators to serve the disadvantaged parts of Columbus.

For those of you who don't like religions that prostheletyze, maybe you are not aware of the fact that Judaism does not seek converts. Indeed, we discourage it. We do not have a heaven or hell; there is no advantage to being Jewish; you just have a lot of extra rules to follows and extra responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is a commitment to making the world a better and more just place. Oh, we also kind of insist that you non-Jews don't kill each other and don't steal from each other.

UPDATE:

Mae reminded me to mention that BREAD also was very active in the move to limit interest rates charged by payday lenders. Also, please do NOT include Jews for Jesus in my description of Jews. To emphasize that point, let me link to a little song (NSFW):

Get the Video Plugin

Posted 4 months ago #
tdziemia
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Hmm ... while techically "religion" doesn't per se require belief in one or more gods, the reality in Western thought and the majority of significant world religions is that one of the beliefs is the existence of a supernatural / superhuman / super-whatever being. That's all I meant. Sure, there are exceptions to every rule, every definition (I suppose New Age beliefs would be one of them?).

And hugh59s group is exactly what I meant. Sure, we could argue that these people all come from faiths which hold certain values in common (compassion, fairness, generosity), but I bet they would welcome an atheist who held similar values. My initial point was that the atheist might lack an obvious conduit for becoming connected to the others.

Posted 4 months ago #
TomOver
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Sorry I didn't refer to this thread before starting a new one about reason and science-based 'spirituality.'

For the most recent round of responses, thanks tdziemia, Rus, Manatee, and hugh59 (BREAD rises ! I've been to one of those gatherings, and don't regret it.)

@ Manatee: As for transhumanism, it may be useful to distinguish it from 'post-humanism.' The latter is related to animal liberation and other parts of the Deep Ecology Movement which calls for getting past anthropocentrism or speciesism. The former pertains to sci-fi and bio-ethics.

Or maybe I'm full of shit, the pharmaceutical-laden, uncompostable kind. Whichever, the following came from keypad thumps, in-between rounds of security-deposit-forfeiting self-flagellation:

Do agnostics and atheists demonstrate love for the world as effectively as religious folk?

Posted 4 months ago #
hugh59
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TomOver said:
Sorry I didn't refer to this thread before starting a new one about reason and science-based 'spirituality.'

For the most recent round of responses, thanks tdziemia, Rus, Manatee, and hugh59 (BREAD rises ! I've been to one of those gatherings, and don't regret it.)

@ Manatee: As for transhumanism, it may be useful to distinguish it from 'post-humanism.' The latter is related to animal liberation and other parts of the Deep Ecology Movement which calls for getting past anthropocentrism or speciesism. The former pertains to sci-fi and bio-ethics.

Or maybe I'm full of shit, the pharmaceutical-laden, uncompostable kind. Whichever, the following came from keypad thumps, in-between rounds of security-deposit-forfeiting self-flagellation:

Do agnostics and atheists demonstrate love for the world as effectively as religious folk?

Ha ha! Last week (on December 26th to be precise) I volunteered at a soup kitchen. The person in charge was making position assignments and asked, "Would you like to take care of the bread?" I immediately responded, "Rises!" That got a good laugh from the other BREAD volunteers there.

BREAD has its problems but trying to force religion on people is not one of them.

Posted 4 months ago #
TomOver
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hugh59 said:
Ha ha! Last week (on December 26th to be precise) I volunteered at a soup kitchen. The person in charge was making position assignments and asked, "Would you like to take care of the bread?" I immediately responded, "Rises!" That got a good laugh from the other BREAD volunteers there.

BREAD has its problems but trying to force religion on people is not one of them.

Hugh, to what degree is your religious faith your inspiration and strength for putting love into practice as you engage with people in the community ?

For me, not praying nor otherwise worshiping a god seems to result in me having more empathy and compassion and more mental clarity for putting it into practice.

But maybe if love is the core issue, the means of getting to that state of mind might vary from person to person.

God or no God, I venture we have common ground in terms of recognizing the importance of spiritual love. By 'spiritual', I mean that thru which we get a sense of purpose from our connection to others (not limited to humans), in ways that often apply beyond our own individual lifetime.

Posted 4 months ago #
TomOver
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Regarding putting spiritual love into practice with or without God, there is a conversation about this on Facebook.

Posted 4 months ago #