How Can Religious Cultures Become Less Fundamentalist?

[rug]

Posted: 06/21/2012 11:09 am
Christopher Lane.
Professor of English, Northwestern University;
Author, The Age of Doubt: Tracing the Roots of Our Religious Uncertainty

In her recent Huff Post interview with Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, Sister Joan Chittister, author and member of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, spoke forcefully about the Vatican crackdown on nuns, with arguments that also addressed the broader issue of doctrinal dissent and how -- indeed, whether -- religions can find a way to accommodate it.

Of the current Vatican crackdown, Sister Joan spoke of a "Daddy knows best" attitude that implies: "Sit down and shut up. We will tell you what to think, we will tell you what to do -- what would a woman know?" Beyond the structural hierarchy of the Catholic Church and the question of Papal infallibility, the issue, according to Sister Joan, concerns a form of fundamentalism about doctrine and belief. As she put it, characterizing the current position: " 'We tell you what to think about scriptures, because you will destroy the sacred word. You won't understand it. You'll destroy it.' "

Fundamentalism of all stripes tends to display the same anxious authoritarianism, both in its obsessive attempt to control the faith and actions of believers and nonbelievers and in its slavish insistence on scriptural literalism. By contrast, the position that Sister Joan advocates is capable not just of tolerating difference and dissent, but also of imagining an ecumenical relation to faith, based (as the word "ecumenical" tends to mean) on "establishing or promoting unity among churches or religions."

The interview and its positions, which I found courageous, led me to thinking about cultural and historical examples when doctrinal dissent came to seem of paramount importance, and how such conflict eventually was made to dissipate.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-lane/how-can-religious-culture_b_1593267.html

[madrchsod]

2. luther nailed his to the door

maybe some should place a list of demands on the the doors to the Vatican

[cbayer]

4. Would love to see the Nuns on the Bus do just that.

[cbayer]

3. Really interesting woman. I hope she keeps speaking up.

[rug]

5. She's been a thorn in their side for years.

In fact, the whole priory at Erie has been.

http://www.eriebenedictines.org/bfp

[cbayer]

6. And not backing down.

Do you think the current crop of activist nuns have any chance of precipitating any change at this point?

[rug]

7. Every action helps, so yes. Bigger changes need bigger actions. I'm optimistic.

[cbayer]

8. Glad to hear that. What kinds of actions can the Vatican take against them?

What kinds of risks do they take by taking a stand?

[rug]

9. The most the Vatican can do institutionally is diassociate them from the corporate church.

So, their monastery cannot state it's part of the Roman Catholic Church and other Roman Catholic institutions cannot recognize them as such. It is a big deal but it's also not a big deal.

Personally, any or all of them could be excommunicated which means they could not receice Sacraments (except Confession).

Their sactions are generally limited to Canos 1311 to 1399.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__P4U.HTM

I don't see any of this as likely to happen.

[klatu]

10. Religious cultures cannot beocme less fundamentalist?

Religious Cultures Become Fundamentalist because the expectations of the Incarnation have never been met by any theology, religious teaching or tradition. Against this failure of faith they offer in reply an intellectually dishonest 'theodicy' , unprepared to question their conception of faith.

But they may now be forced to do so and thus anyone wanting to counter fundamentalism has the tool to do the job: For what science and religion, not to mention the rest of us, thought impossible has happened. History has its first literal, testable and fully demonstrable proof for faith.

The first wholly new interpretation for two thousand years of the moral teachings of Christ is published on the web. Radically different from anything else we know of from history, this new teaching is predicated upon a precise, predefined and predictable experience and called 'the first Resurrection' in the sense that the Resurrection of Jesus was intended to demonstrate Gods' willingness to real Himself and intervene directly into the natural world for those obedient to His will, paving the way for access, by faith, to the power of divine transcendence and ultimate proof!

Thus 'faith' becomes an act of trust in action, to search and discover this direct individual intervention into the natural world by omnipotent power that confirms divine will, law, command and covenant, which at the same time, realigns our moral compass with the Divine, "correcting human nature by a change in natural law, altering biology, consciousness and human ethical perception beyond all natural evolutionary boundaries." So like it or no, a new religious teaching, testable by faith, meeting all Enlightenment criteria of evidence based causation and definitive proof now exists. Nothing short of an intellectual, moral and religious revolution is getting under way. To test or not to test, that is the question? More info at http://www.energon.org.uk,
http://soulgineering.com/2011/05/22/the-final-freedoms/